Oneiroi
by R.C. McLachlan
Summary: There is not a dream that Castiel does not know, except this one. 5x10 AU, Dean/Castiel.
1. Prologue

**Prologue.****  
><strong>**"Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there."**

He enjoys the ones that find them upon a lake or stream, both equally soaked in sunlight and comfortable silences, his side warm where Dean presses up against it. The words shared between them are few, but heavy with intent, and the tone in which they are spoken is always warm. Dean catches at least ten fish and always jokes that they are the same one, and shares the rod with him. Sometimes they are not on the water but on its banks, sitting at an old picnic table and sharing a beer.

The ones that show him different outcomes, paths not taken or simply not even forged, are always surprising. How Dean might have reacted, had he told him everything - _everything_ - before sending him away from the prophet Chuck's kitchen, as Raphael came to mete out his punishment. _I'll hold them off!_ rewritten as _It was always you, you, you_, and the shocked viridian of Dean's gaze, white-washed by an archangel's arrival, the last thing he would ever see. How things might have changed if Dean had never faced Alastair in Cheyenne, if the angels had interrogated the demon instead and spared Dean the mental and physical trauma. Dean would not have broken, would have continued to look at him with that tenuous trust. How they might still have Ellen and Joanna Harvelle if he hadn't fallen into so obvious a trap.

He likes the ones when he's human and has always been, because his experiences give him new insight into the world and himself. In particular, he likes the one where he is a human and can fly. It is not second nature, but a struggle. He revels in the pull of muscle as he fights to keep aloft, the strain that causes the small of his back to twinge as he leaves the ground and bypasses the power lines, the roofs of houses, cresting the tops of the trees, desperate for thermal pockets to help ease the burden of such an impossible act. But oh, how he marvels at the world below for the wonder it truly is.

He has been everything and everyone. A child, an animal, human and angel, a doctor like in Dean's television show, a Beltian body on the end of an Acacia leaf to be consumed by a spider. He has been chased by an unknown foe and relived boring days. He has been mundane and extraordinary both.

He hates the falling ones.

But his favorite of all is the quiet one he has had more than once. He wakes up in unkempt sheets, alone, tired and aching from sexual intercourse the night before, warm from sleep and smelling of sweat and musk. There are photos behind glass frames. He moves from the room and into the narrow hallway with the steps of someone who has done so hundreds of times before, and knows the sound of the creaking wood of the stairs better than he has ever known anything else. There is a room with second-hand furniture, books strewn across a brand- new coffee table, the titles eclectic and all appealing, and he ignores them in favor of the sound of boiling grease coming from the kitchen, the sleek lines of Dean's body as he sings something about 'knocking him out with those American thighs'. He drops the bacon from the pan onto paper towels, pressing it down to wring the grease from it, and then dumps it onto a paper plate.

Dean chides him - teasingly, he knows it's all in good fun - for sleeping in after Dean had done all the work last night, but hands him the plate and says everyone's going to be at Sam's around three. That gives them two hours to work off breakfast, Dean says, waggling his eyebrows in a way that never fails to make him laugh.

He never finds out what happens beyond that point, his own laughter the last thing he hears before it fades, but it doesn't matter. The feeling of it, the simple joy of being there - in that moment - is beautiful. It comes to him in technicolor light cast from glass spire prisms.

Regardless of its form, who he is and where he ends up, there is not a dream Castiel does not know.

Except.

There is a tree on a sun-soaked hill, an elm with resigned branches that birth globules of light and thought, heavy fruit sprouting wings. They tear from the boughs and fly away, leaving the sad elm, never to return and never missed. More blossom in their place almost immediately.

He studies it - this well-oiled machine - and is so engrossed in the process he does not hear the heavy footsteps in the grass behind him.

"Nice," Dean says, coming to stand beside Castiel. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up at the tree with a critical eye - usually reserved for the Impala or a piece of pie. "You taking up botany now?"

Castiel shakes his head. "This is not my tree."

"Well, I don't see anyone else around, so it could be yours." Dean turns, presses his back to the tree, and slides down to sprawl comfortably at its base. He pats the grass beside him. "C'mon. Sit under your tree, dude. You're gonna give it a complex."

The trunk of the tree expands with a sigh of agreement, so Castiel sits.

They say nothing, content to sit in silence and watch the tall grass sway in the wind, saturated with gold. The whole world is filled to the brim with it. He turns to find Dean's gaze fixed on him, the green of his eyes gilded by the sun. He's fascinated by the palette of browns and burnished horn flecks there, and has to squint through the brightness to see them.

"It's nice here," Dean remarks, the corners of his mouth relaxed.

"I don't know this place."

Dean smiles and looks out into the endless stretch of golden grass, a veritable sea, as if such a thing were completely normal. There is no horizon. "Are you sure?"

"There is no place like this on Earth," Castiel says, tilting his head back to gaze into the sky. Built into it is a series of windows, each one framed by the same unwashed curtains that are part of the décor of Dean and Sam's current motel room. A bird flies by on the other side of the center pane then disappears once it clears the frame.

He tilts his chin down, eyes burning from the brightness of the sky, and starts in surprise when Dean's fingers covers his, his knuckles bumping Dean's palm. Something in his chest flutters and it feels as though he has breathed in something brilliant - a star gone supernova, perhaps. It happens whenever he is close to Dean, his heart thudding almost painfully in his chest, and every time it feels brand new, as if he has never felt anything like it. It feels like flying.

"Dean, I am sorry for -"

"Hey, hey, it's all right. Relax. I'm not pissed anymore. Let's just sit, yeah? We could stay here for a bit," Dean says, and Castiel hears the smile in his words. "We could stay as long as you want."

Dean elbows him lightly in the side, drawing his attention, and nods toward the field. Castiel follows his gaze and finds something standing in the distance. It is a silhouette, but it is obviously some kind of construct, older than anything that may have ever existed. Castiel squints through the gold tint of the world around them and realizes bemusedly that it is a gate.

Fingers catch his chin and turn his head away. Dean smiles at him, and his eyes - beautiful, precious eyes - drop down to Castiel's lips, which are soft and moist in a way they have never been, and the heart Castiel stole beats a frantic tattoo in his chest. He knows what such a look means. He has watched so many people share kisses of the mouth and he wants them for himself. More than anything he wants to know Dean this way.

He can hear his own trembling breath, a thin and reedy thing that escapes his parted lips like frightened birds, and hates himself for the way his hands quiver, unable to remain still as Dean coaxes him nearer. Soon, he can taste Dean's steady exhalations, and his eyes slide shut of their own volition.

He knows what he is risking and it is more than worth it. Dean will be his to know, to have. Their noses bump and his heart lurches, his Grace screaming through every part of him at the way the hair at the nape of his neck stands on end when Dean places his hand there and strokes. The skin below the swell of his lip brushes against Dean's chin and he shudders, tilts his head just _so_ to -

"Castiel."

He freezes.

Dean pauses and frowns at him, so close. So, so very close. Their eyelashes whisper together. "Are you okay?"

He pulls away, those calloused fingers falling away and leaving him bereft. The world fills up with shadows, coming like a tidal wave, swallowing the golden sea of grass whole. "This is a dream. I am dreaming."

His frustration upon opening his eyes and finding himself in Jodhpur cannot be measured. Gone are the golden hill and sad elm, replaced by congested air and endless blue walls. There is no Dean; there is no forgiveness; there is no kiss. There is only Jodhpur, where he ended up barely a day ago with the losses of Ellen and Joanna Harvelle still fresh wounds on his soul, and the lack of his Father in the world.

There is not a dream Castiel does not know, because he knows the disappointment of waking up.

He exhales long and low, closing his eyes against the desperately empty feeling in his lungs, the body panicking at the lack of oxygen. The cells clamor in surprise and alarm, conserving the little they can in a frantic attempt to live. He feels them scream out together, then subside, withering and dying. Hypoxia.

Taking a breath and feeling the ones on the brink swell and rejuvenate, he pushes away from the wall he'd been leaning against and steps onto a narrow street framed in bright blue. Jodhpur has always held his attention and admiration; a cramped but devastatingly beautiful city, a haven for him now, a place to go when the search yields unhappy results. He mostly likes it for the noise; it fills the silence left behind by the Host, who took the Song away from him. It had been punishment for standing against Zachariah in John Winchester's storage unit while Sam and Dean suffocated and bled at his feet.

He gropes in the pocket of his coat and pulls out the phone Sam procured for him weeks ago, carefully pressing the side button to illuminate the display screen. He has two numbers in the phone and neither of them come up as having attempted to contact him. There are no missed calls. There are no texts in his inbox. After what happened in Carthage, his phone will be undoubtedly silent for a long time.

Carthage.

A group of children brushes by him, giggling in Hindi about the odd American wearing a coat in this warm clime, and he waits for them to turn the corner before winging miles away to walk down the steps of the palace of Umaid Bhawan and settle in the gardens, which are surprisingly empty. Surrounded by well-trimmed and carefully positioned flora, he closes his eyes and inhales.

Carthage, Missouri will be the first of many. Castiel can feel the very earth shudder as Lucifer's campaign against Heaven is rendered anathema, seeping into the soil and spreading out. By morning, Lucifer's reach will have spanned across the oceans, more towns will have fallen, and the dead will mean as little as the population counts on city welcome signs.

He cannot see them, but even thousands of miles away he can feel Dean and Sam burying blood and loss under layers of gauze and the adhesive of band-aids while Bobby restlessly glides across the first floor of his home, drowning in grief and whisky.

Castiel was still haunting the halls of Bobby's house as Dean's thoughts screamed vitriol, rage, and hate for him. He lowered his eyes whenever Castiel passed by, something for which he is absurdly grateful - even oceans away. He could not face the accusation, the hurt and betrayal that were in the forefront of Dean's gaze. They had been there once before, in the Green Room, and Castiel had buckled under those eyes in a matter of moments, keen to throw away all that he was for the chance Dean might look at him with something other than mistrust and hate. He is loathe to think what he might do now.

_"You're_sorry_? You weren't there, Cas! Ellen and Jo? Your fault. Their blood is on your hands! We lost two people because you fucking deserted us when we needed you! You need to leave, Cas. We're done. Don't you ever come back because we are_done."

Castiel won't be able to continue this reprieve in India for much longer. He will have to return to the Winchesters to plan the next strike against Lucifer, to start gathering resources and securing allies, to face Dean's wrath and rescinded friendship. But for now… For now, Castiel wants nothing more than to cultivate the emptiness inside of himself and wallow in it.

"One of those days, huh?"

He doesn't turn to meet Zachariah. Exhaustion and sorrow weigh him down, a frighteningly human feeling, and he has no strength to fight should the situation call for it. The burns from his proximity to Lucifer's holy fire still throb.

"Ah, but that's what happens. It's always hard when the time comes for you to put them down."

"Say what you came to say and go," Castiel snarls, with more anger and hate than he should be capable of feeling. He doesn't enjoy feeling anger in Jodhpur; this is his place of respite, and Zachariah is tainting it.

Zachariah grins, the vessel's cheeks pulling back to reveal pointed teeth. He looks like a reptile. The breast pocket of his suit jacket bulges once, like an exhale, then subsides. Zachariah does not seem to notice. "You won't ask twice?"

Castiel says nothing but his fingers itch for a blade. Zachariah must sense his impatience because his smirk slips away and he holds up his hands, imploringly.

"I'm not going to attack."

"I don't believe you."

The distrust he has for Zachariah is startlingly sharp, a somewhat surprising reminder of everything he has given up in the name of Winchester, in the name of righteousness.

He once followed Zachariah loyally, blindly, with pleasure even. He implicitly trusted the orders Zachariah had given, because they had come from their Father and His will was always done. He knows this, and yet can only look at these memories as if they belong to someone else. Because he knows now that Zachariah can't be trusted for anything. Castiel knows now the orders given to him were flawed, and wrong, and could never have been handed down from on high.

There is a schism now, Heaven on one side and Dean the other. He knows on which side he stands.

"God is gone, Castiel." The words are spoken without a hint of irony and Castiel knows what is coming next. He's surprised it even took this long. "We've watched you scour this pathetic mudball for Him and carry out what will prove to be a fruitless campaign against Lucifer, and we won't watch any longer. Paradise isn't worth this. We're forfeiting."

"Coward," Castiel spits, finally turning to face him. The chasm in him widens further. "He would want us to fight for them."

Zachariah explodes with laughter, and the shoulder of his jacket, the breast pocket, the sides, swell. "You have no _idea_ what He wants. None of us knows. What we do know is that we aren't contenders in this anymore. We played the hand we were dealt and the cards were shit. Lucifer's killed off all the vessels, did you know that? Entire bloodlines wiped out; nothing to spare for us. They're all gone. We've lost any advantage we might have had in fighting on this plane."

That can't be true. "How could Lucifer have that kind of reach?"

"Does it matter? _We have no vessels._ And as soon as I'm done here, I'm abandoning mine and getting as far away from these _pig-filthy_humans as I can. If you had any sense underneath that rat's nest, you'd do the same."

"I won't leave them." He won't leave Dean to die. "I won't leave."

Zachariah snorts, then takes a step closer. There are things beneath his jacket, swelling and collapsing like pockets of air, and more are pushing against the fabric of his slacks. "Well, then let me tell you how this is going to go: at the end of today, we're closing the Gates. For good. And every hour between then and now, every minute they slide shut a little bit more? That much of your Grace will flake away until there's nothing left. You think they'll still want you? You think _Dean_ will give two shits about you then?"

He can't dispute Zachariah's warning, nor his bleak prediction. If the Gates close, it will sever his connection with the Host and render him powerless. Mortal. He's under no false pretenses that Dean keeps him around for anything more than his abilities and knowledge; becoming mortal will only give Dean reason to turn from him.

Even if he is no longer welcome, Castiel won't see his name added to the list of those who have abandoned Dean.

"I'm staying."

"Of course you are. Such a loyal dog. Do your masters reward you well? Can you take both of them at once, or are you only Dean's bitch -" Zachariah stops and takes notice of the movement in his clothing. The skin of his jaw fluctuates, presses outward. His throat. His forehead. His gut bloats outward, the buttons of his jacket flying away like bullets, imprecise and erratic the way Dean's shots never are.

Zachariah opens his mouth and something slides from between his lips. The wings are gossamer, the body made entirely of light, and it flutters past Castiel's cheek. It's warm; he can feel it against his skin as it goes, the barest murmur of disturbance.

"What -" More pour out from his thin mouth, drifting like dandelion clocks, their wings barely disturbing the air, so unlike the complicated, intricately designed monstrosities angels carry. "What is this?"

The vessel - who the man was before Zachariah took him, Castiel does not know - balloons out, the sallow skin straining until it cracks, crimson blossoming in fault lines that keep growing and expanding, the body misshapen and bloated, inflating until it resembles little more than a pustule ready to pop, or a volcano about to erupt.

Zachariah's screams are drowned under the weight of the millions of impossibly light wing-beats as they tear him asunder, exploding into the air as the first winter snowfall, filling the sky with light. Fireflies, like the ones Dean used to catch in his yard when he was three and untainted by the supernatural world.

Castiel closes his eyes and inhales.

Children squeal with laughter and old, loved metal creaks beneath the weight of bodies upon swings. He opens his eyes and sits down upon the park bench, watching a group of little girls jump into squares drawn in chalk. They sing songs with each hop upon the asphalt.

_Three little angels all dressed in white__  
><em>_Trying to get to Heaven on the end of a kite__  
><em>_But the kite string broke and down they all fell__  
><em>_Instead of going to Heaven, they all went to -_

He remembers being here with Dean at the beginning of their allegiance, everything so strained and new. Distrust and hate had bled from Dean's soul as if Castiel had cut those very wounds himself, but Dean had listened to the voicing of Castiel's fears, his doubts, his offense at being called a hammer. He is still relieved the town had not been razed to the ground; he is relieved Dean did not compromise himself.

Exhaling, he flexes his wings. He will not have many excuses to do so very soon. He will not have the ability. What will it be like to be tied to one place, tethered to the ground like every other human being? It will probably be much more degrading than riding in automobiles, confining as they are. But riding in automobiles may have to become his new way of flying. He will get used to it. He will have to.

It's worth it. For Dean, for this world, the sacrifice is the only gift he can give.

_Two little angels all dressed in white__  
><em>_Trying to get to Heaven on the end of a kite__  
><em>_But the kite string broke and down they all fell__  
><em>_Instead of going to Heaven, they all went to -_

The children pay him no heed, too engrossed in their games of play. Even the globules of light ignore him and instead flock to the grand yet wilted elm tree that stands rather sadly in the center of the park.

It is dark. It is night. The world is alight with pulsating whispers and gossamer. There is something odd about all of this.

_One little angel all dressed in blue__  
><em>_Trying to figure out where his human went to__  
><em>_But the ground rose up, from which two were born__  
><em>_One was made of ivory, the other made of -_

Castiel wakes to the loud, unpleasant sound of his cellular phone ringing. His eyes open, startled against the onslaught of blue walls and bustling people in the streets of Jodhpur.

He is still in Jodhpur.

A dream.

Licking his lips, he takes his phone from his pocket and quells the thrill of happiness that bursts in his chest at the display name on his screen. Dean is calling.

"Dean," he answers, prompt, to the point. Dean has never been one for useless pleasantries, and Castiel has never been one to pander to the human need for ever-changing social etiquettes. Even if all he wants is to sit and quietly ask Dean what he has been up to in Castiel's absence, if he is okay.

But it is not Dean.

_"Cas? Oh God, Cas, you need to come here now."_

Castiel swallows disappointment; it is a taste with which he is becoming too familiar. "Hello, Sam."

_"It's Dean. God, it's - You need to get here, you need to get here right now. Cas, he__**won't wake up**__."_


	2. One

**One.****  
><strong>**"Dreams and anguish bring us together."**

Angels do not dream, and so Castiel has carried a stigma long since before he ever heard the name Winchester. It has always set him apart from his brothers, not as a point of contention, but just more misunderstanding.

Uriel, on more than one occasion, expressed his distaste for Castiel's ability to envision possibilities not first meted out by those higher in the Host.

_It is not for us to dream, Castiel. It is for_them_because they_want_._ Said with such distain, such disgust.

Castiel can't remember not wanting. He has wanted as long as he has _been_. Wanted to be a soldier in the higher garrisons. Wanted to walk among mortal Men. Wanted to catch a glimpse of the humans who would someday fulfill the prophecy and house his brothers. Wanted to be the first to rescue the Righteous Man from the Pit. Wanted to stand against Heaven in the name of Dean Winchester.

Wanted Dean.

It is in his nature to want, and because of this he has been able to empathize with Humanity more than his brothers and sisters ever could. Perhaps it is why he was drawn to Dean in the first place; want called to want and tethered their fates together.

He recognizes the importance of want and, since coming to Earth, he has been able to differentiate it from need. There is no want in Sam's frightened, reedy voice as he relays his location through the phone, only need, his words rendered hollow and somehow small through the distortion of radio waves. Castiel commits them to memory and casts Jodhpur one last glance. There is a feeling, a niggle, something like regret, and he knows he will never return to this place again without the aid of an airplane.

"Maiṁ tumasē pyāra karatā hūm̐," he murmurs, drawing stares from a few passersby. He rips open a hole and slips through to the nurse's station at the Massachusetts General Hospital Intensive Care wing.

It is quiet. No, it is hushed. There is no quiet here. Quiet implies something restful; Castiel can only feel the taint of desperation and resignation, a thousand, thousand, thousand souls having come and gone, having loved and lost, having given up hope for a happy resolution. So many have come here, broken, and departed for the Kingdom. How many more will try to do the same and will find no open gate for them? How many beyond this place will be turned away?

A woman in white and blue linen - Carolyn Straubinger - lifts her head from the palm of her hand and twirls her pen nimbly through her fingers. She attempts to muster up a smile for him, but it is cut down by exhaustion and the recent death of one of her favorite patients (Salvatore Martinez, 35 years old, Hispanic, handsome, post-motorcycle accident, induced coma to stop edema, time of death 15:39).

"I can only let you in if you're family," Carolyn says, eyeing his coat with something Castiel recognizes as doubt. He's seen it plenty in Dean's eyes to know it well.

"I am," he lies, hopefully convincingly. He is not very good at it. "Family. I am family."

She shrugs, too tired to really care, and glances down at a desk organizer stuffed with manila folders. "Name?"

Sam had not said if Dean was admitted under an alias. If there is such a thing as luck, Sam panicked and gave the hospital Dean's real name. "I... believe he would be listed as Winchester."

Carolyn cards through the labels on the folders, worrying a piece of dead skin on her lip. It pulls and spills blood, a small amount, enough to complete a weak sigil if needed, and he tucks the information away for future reference. He had not thought to use blood of the mouth before. His lips rarely split, despite what Dean says about Chapstick.

Carolyn makes a sound of triumph and takes a file out. "Winchester, Dean. Room 449A."

Perhaps she glances up to double check his claim of being family, but he is already being met with the mechanical inhale/exhale of artificial breath in 449A.

"Sam," he murmurs to the form hunched over at the edge of the bed, the cotton of Sam's shirt wrinkled and stretched across his broad back, and Sam starts in surprise, turning, unveiling -

_"You weren't there. Ellen and Jo? Your fault. Their blood is on your hands. We're done. Don't you ever come back because we're done."_

Dean has never been so still, not even in slumber when Castiel comes in the night to act as a buffer against the persistent memory of Hell. Not even in anger. There is no movement not the fault of the machines scattered around the bed. Dean's chest rises and falls too sharply for it to be natural, his false breath pressing clouds to the hard, clear plastic encasing his mouth. He looks so unimportant, so insignificant, and there is suddenly not enough air for Castiel to drag into his borrowed lungs. The room is too hot, too crowded, and there is no trace of hope to be found on bare white walls or Sam's drawn, pale face.

He makes a fist with his right hand. The need to destroy something is overwhelming.

"Cas," Sam says, voice still that hollow whisper, as if he cannot find air either. "The doctor said he's - I never thought anything of it, you know? Something like this never seemed like it was in the cards for us. Nothing like this, nothing so... normal. Being ripped apart by something, yeah, definitely, I mean it's practically a guarantee, but not... God, I used to _joke_ about him being brain-dead." Sam rises from his chair, drops back into it and rises again, too small to contain whatever maelstrom rages inside. His voice is shaking, cracking. "How could I joke about something like that? It's not funny. It's not. It's _not_ -"

Castiel moves quickly and places a hand on each of Sam's arms, stemming the flow of words. He can't stand to listen to any more of it.

"What happened." It is not a question. There is no question Castiel needs to know where to place the blame. Was it Lucifer's doing, or perhaps Zachariah looking for a way to bring Castiel down even further, a parting gift before the Gates close. Or perhaps it was something lower, a hurt he can heal even with his diminishing Grace.

Sam draws in a shuddering breath, closes his eyes and squares his shoulders, then fixes Castiel with a somewhat less hysterical gaze. "We were investigating a case up here. One of Bobby's friends called in a favor, and we needed something to do, anything to get out of Bobby's house, you know? After Ellen and Jo..."

"I know, Sam," Castiel says quietly, because he does know. He knows they paid for his naivety with their lives. Sam perhaps doesn't mean to be cruel in his reminder, but it hurts to hear all the same. "I know."

"It was these comas," Sam says. "Eight people in, like, five days unexpectedly going comatose. Nothing connected them - except they all kept mentioning something about lights with wings before it happened. So we looked and we looked and we interviewed and looked some more, but we couldn't find anything. I told Dean we should call you, but he... We didn't want to bother you." Even Castiel can lie better than that. "Then he started seeing them. The lights. I couldn't see them, but he swore they were there, just like the others. And it got worse, and we got tired. Went to bed. I woke up... and he didn't."

He has never heard of such a thing. Winged light. He should know it, has seen it before somewhere dripping in gold, but every time he reaches for whatever it is, it floats away. It is hazy and altogether too far away for him to grasp in this claustrophobic room. His fingers twitch with the need to touch and diagnose as he glances back at Dean's still form. " …You found nothing else? The only complaint was the lights?"

"He thought they were faeries. He saw them for the first time at a Laundromat and said they were there to steal his all his left socks." A smile disguised as a grimace twists Sam's mouth, then falls away as quickly as a winter sunset. "I thought maybe it was just exhaustion… but he kept seeing them."

_You should have called me,_ Castiel wants to shout, but he holds his tongue. He has nothing nice to say, so he says nothing.

Approaching Dean warily, Castiel half-expects him to jump out of the bed and proclaim this all to have been a big joke, but there is nothing to greet him except the punched-out sound of the machine forcing Dean's lungs to breathe. He hates the contraption with a ferocity that startles him.

"Cas," Sam says, apparently without reason or direction, and Castiel ignores him. If he is to do this right, he needs to concentrate in order to ration and distribute his Grace properly. He could very well use too much and burn Dean from the inside out, or use too little and become trapped.

"Please, don't talk," Castiel says, placing his palm on Dean's forehead.

"Are you – are you _exorcising_ him?" Sam yelps, eyes wide, and Castiel bares his teeth at him, an incredibly human gesture.

"Sam." He allows himself to touch the soft strands of Dean's hair, the ends tickling the pads of his fingers, but stops himself from lifting his hand and carding his fingers through them. That is too much of a transgression. He removes the clear oxygen mask from Dean's face instead."If I am to help, I need to concentrate. No matter what you see, or hear, or think you see or hear, you cannot intervene. Not even to speak. Do you understand?"

Swallowing, the sunken skin beneath his eyes scrunching in doubt, Sam nods.

Castiel doesn't have time to feel relief. He closes his eyes and turns his attention inward, calling to the strands of light that line his vessel's limbs, all of them connected in a knot at his core. They vibrate weakly in response, but it's enough. He pushes the strands through his thumb, middle and smallest finger, each of them poised at the pulse sites in Dean's neck, temple, jaw.

_Let me in_, he whispers to Dean's soul, and instead of the permission or rejection that should rise to meet his plea, he tumbles inside.

This… is worrying. It should not have been so easy, especially where it's Dean he is invading. Dean should have fought him at every point, as is Dean's wont, but there is nothing to buffer his intrusion. Dean is open to him in every way.

He slips through as easily as the horizon cuts across the oceans and begins his search. There is not anything here he does not know. He reforged these ribs, placed his marks on them when it was not enough, and he made this slowly-thudding heart from a particularly beautiful stone that had lain on the forest floor where Dean's grave resided. He calls out to them, but they do not sing back in recognition. They do not sing anything.

A wave of fear crashes over him, but he forces himself to push on, stretching out until he coats everything, these small marvels that he resurrected and fixed, soothed the cracks and breathed life into decay. The blood he concocted from rainfall is forced to pulse by the false oxygen that tells the brain it must keep the heart beating, that there is something here to keep alive.

There isn't.

This is a shell. An empty stadium.

He calls out, pleads for the soul to respond, but there is only the lie of air and heartbeat.

Flesh and bone do not a person make. Dean is not here.

This cannot be. How could an entire soul depart a body - _this_ body – without his knowledge? Even half the world away, Castiel would have felt Dean leave this Earth. He would have felt Michael force his way into the sack of meat left behind and the End coming upon them. But there was nothing.

He moves to pull back, tempers his Grace into strands to cause the least amount of damage, when there is a _flicker_. What - ?

Castiel and his Grace are suddenly thrust back into the world, a surprisingly strong onslaught of debility following like his own shadow upon a wall. He places a hand to steady himself on the rail that lines the bed, breathing in through his nose and parting his lips to exhale. He's dizzy; it is not a pleasant feeling.

Castiel hears the pad of hesitant footsteps, but no sound is forthcoming. Sam took his warning to heart. Good.

"Sam," he says, and Sam lets out a long breath.

"So? Did you find him?"

He keeps his eyes closed, still attempting to steady himself. How quickly are the Gates closing? He cannot be this weak already. "I… there was nothing of Dean Winchester in there, Sam."

The outrage Sam expresses in his voice is to be expected; the resignation, the tone that suggests Sam already figured this, is not. "Did he… did he go to Heaven?"

"I would have felt it," Castiel says, casting his gaze back onto the body. It is not Dean.

Sam opens his mouth as if to issue a protest, or a sob, but says nothing, as if he doesn't know the right words. There are no words. Castiel knows he ought to offer some kind of comfort, a kind platitude to set Sam at ease, but he cannot think past the brush of light that pushed him out of the hollow space where Dean's soul once lay. It could have been avoided. This all could have been so easily avoided, had they called him. Had he stayed with them in Carthage instead of chasing ghosts.

"Cas," Sam says, altogether too loud in the room, and Castiel forces himself to meet his gaze.

"Why didn't you call me?" The flinch on Sam's face, the downward twitch of his mouth, seems more pronounced in the dark of the room, but he cannot find pleasure in this silent admission.

Sam swallows and looks down.

"Have I fallen so badly in your esteem that you wouldn't call me at the first sign of trouble?" Castiel asks, and is surprised the cold, heavy feeling that sweeps through him isn't the disappointment he expected. He knows the ghastly hand that dulls the world, that makes him want to sometimes turn his back on Dean and Sam's debilitating, endlessly frustrating humanness, but this isn't that. It isn't disappointment, or anger, or righteousness, or joy. Whatever this is hurts.

It's hurt. He's hurt.

"No," Sam says, shaking his head. "We don't blame you for Carthage. We _don't_."

"Don't you?"

"It was Lucifer's fault. I know that. Dean knows that. We do, but…"

Ah. There it is. "Say it."

"Where _were_ you, Cas?" Sam bursts out, and it is not the usual easily spoken words Castiel has come to expect from him. These tumble out as if accidentally. "You just _left_ us, and we needed you. We were totally exposed so that you could, what, chase a couple of reapers? Where did you go? Why weren't you -"

There is a throb from his right calf where the heat of the holy fire had seared his Grace. He'd stepped too close, so filled with rage at Lucifer's off-handed comment about Sam, about someone who was no longer just 'the boy with the demon blood'. About a friend.

It would be so easy to defend himself against the accusation in Sam's tone, to simply say that Lucifer had detained him, but Sam is right. He never should have left them, not even for the commodity of a thousand reapers.

He does not have to answer; Sam does it for him. "It doesn't matter. It was all fucked-up from the start."

Sam touches the bed next to Dean's arm - a brief gesture, entirely human in its complicated simplicity - and Castiel watches him mouth 'wake up'. The disappointment that furls into existence at the sight isn't new or unfamiliar. It was the first real emotion he understood upon watching the Winchesters interact, realizing he would never have such ties to his own brothers.

"Do you think it's some kind of trick or spell? We didn't think to check for hex bags with the other cases -" Sam walks over to a chair made of a hard plastic and falls into it, raking his hands through his hair.

Castiel stares. "What did you say?"

Sam shrugs, utterly exhausted. "We've run into witches plenty of ti - Cas?"

He casts around, hoping to see a glint of light somewhere in the room, the promise of metal, but there is nothing. Hospitals are about order, he reminds himself, recalling the medical TV show Dean used to take a perverse pleasure in making him watch. When the doctors were not having sex with each other and those below their station, they were pulling pre-wrapped tools out of drawers in order to save lives.

The drawers open easily, all labeled and coded by color. He pulls out several packaged blades - _scalpel, Dr. Sexy tones to the nurse he had been kissing in the broom closet an hour earlier_ - and spins to the nearest wall.

It has been years since he wrote the name of an archangel, never mind in his own blood. Not his blood. The blood he stole from an innocent man who wanted nothing more than to serve his Lord. It's enough that he can siphon it out of the soft underbelly of his arm, the flesh splitting beneath the kiss of the scalpel, and use it to paint the holiest of sigils on the white of the wall.

Up. Down. Up. Down. Across. Around.

Sam moves to stand behind him, displacing the atmosphere, smelling of sweat and salt and recycled air. "Cas?"

Castiel smears the blood from his arm onto his other hand and places his palm over the sigil, imbuing it with a touch of Grace. He must begin to ration it, save it for times, like now, when he truly needs it.

_Casarmi cicles e baltoha allar e apila pi, Jabrail. Gavri'el. Gabriel._

There is a certain amount of pomp and circumstance in the arrival of any angel above the status of Principality. The Thrones, he knows, love their trumpets, so very much like thunder, both terrible and beautiful. Ophanim appear as wheels within wheels, wreathed in flame, hundreds of eyes opening and closing, judging.

Archangels arrive in holy light and righteous fury. He remembers this from his encounter with Raphael in Chuck Shurley's kitchen, the way his human ears rang with the sound of his death coming for him on swift wings.

Which is why it is somewhat surprising when he is slammed into the far wall of the room, two hands around his throat pressing him into plaster and pipe. Gabriel's vessel is smaller and more compact than Jimmy, but the strength in those lithe arms and the rage in his eyes cannot be quantified.

The smile that breaks over Gabriel's jocular face sends Castiel's stolen heart into a thunderous frenzy, fear gripping him even tighter than the hands around his throat.

"Hey there, kids!" Gabriel says cheerily, eyes wide and seething. "And here I'd thought we'd had our little reunion. Didn't expect to see you so soon - and I _certainly_ -" his grip on Castiel's throat tightens, the trachea threatening to collapse, "- didn't expect to be called _by name_."

The door and window rattle. Sam holds onto Dean's bed frame for balance.

Castiel scrabbles at Gabriel's knuckles, his hands trying to pry the fingers from where they curl around his neck. Something inside pops and gives way, crumbling like old stone, and he chokes on the wash of blood that follows. Gabriel's wrath will crush him before he can even utter an explanation.

"Gabriel, stop!" Sam shouts, visibly torn between helping Castiel and protecting his brother.

"Remember that time I said I was in witness protection?" Gabriel murmurs, as if unaware of Castiel's struggles, moving his face closer until Castiel can feel the wash of hot, unnecessary breath against his ear. "Guess what. Still there. What the fuck were you thinking, calling me by name? If Heaven heard your little -"

Gabriel stops and cocks his head, curious. Castiel recognizes it as something Dean makes fun of him for doing, and tries to gasp out his brother's name.

"What's happening to you, bro?"

The fingers peel away and Castiel drops to the floor, unceremonious and dismissed, like human refuse. He can't recall a time when an angel treated another thusly. Even when they're at war and killing each other, there is respect.

Gabriel steps back. "You're kind of… _flaking_ away there."

He has seen Dean and Sam both deal with injuries to the throat and has watched them suffocate, and while he always put a stop to it, the ache in his throat makes him feel guilty for not stopping it sooner. It is an utterly vulnerable feeling to which he is not accustomed, having his airway blocked. The bone and tissue are taking too long to heal, blood on his tongue and in between his teeth. He sucks it together and spits it onto the white floor, watching, fascinated, as it runs a little in between the grout. This is what will soon keep him alive, this half-coagulated and slimy substance.

"Jesus, Cas," Sam hisses, dropping to his knees beside him and tilting his chin up to study his throat. Castiel can't help but wince and cough at Sam's probing fingers, pressing against bruised skin and the broken things inside. "This should be healing, right? Why isn't it healing?"

Gabriel crouches down before Castiel, and the discrepancy of their ranks makes him uncomfortable. An archangel should not lower himself before any other. He squints, reaches out, and brushes two fingers against Castiel's neck. Almost immediately the bones knit back together, the split tissues seal; he can breathe again.

"Oh, boy," Gabriel whistles, shaking his head. "What's going on? I mean, I get that you're, like, at the very bottom of the totem pole, but even for you that shouldn't have taken so long. You Falling?"

"It is not of import," Castiel says, allowing Sam to help him to his feet.

"'Not of import'? I can _feel_ it leeching out of y-"

He gestures to the bed, because this is where the focus should be. While he is equally touched and uncomfortable by the concern that roils from Sam's core, the only reason he called Gabriel here is still empty and cold and hooked into machinery. "Dean Winchester is not in this body. Something is inside this shell, keeping me from finding him, keeping me out. Your… immense power will overwhelm it, certainly. Gabriel, you can help him."

Gabriel tilts his head and studies him. Castiel forces himself to hold that stare even as all there is of him trembles. Heaven will soon be lost to him, and if he has lost Dean to whatever forces have taken residence in his body, then this imperfect place will be nothing more than a large grave. _Don't look at me_, he wants to say to Gabriel, _but look at him. Find him for me, because without him I am truly homeless._

Something must register on his face because a muscle in Gabriel's jaw twitches. He looks so at ease in the body of his vessel, a talent borne of centuries spent in the same form, no doubt. Still, even with his entire Grace folded within him, Gabriel is more at home in this borrowed body than Castiel will ever be, even when his own vessel will soon just be _him_.

"Why should I?" Gabriel glances at Dean disinterestedly. "He has a very nasty habit of skewering me with kindling. And his brother's an eight-foot-tall moron."

"Hey!"

"Why do you want me to?"

Castiel swallows against phantom aches and turns to see Dean's chest expand suddenly, mechanically. "You want the Apocalypse to occur, don't you? If Dean Winchester does not w -"

Gabriel shakes his head, eyes dark and glinting with something that Castiel cannot name. "Not what I asked. Why do _you_ want me to?"

There is no answer to that question that could not be used against him, and once again Sam steps in, the skin of his knuckles bleeding to white as his hands curl into fists. "Does it matter? Look, I get that you could give two shits about your brothers, but mine is currently_brain dead_ and maybe even just _plain dead_. Why does Cas want you to? Because if you don't, _I_ will hunt you down. I don't care if you're an archangel or _God_. I'll find a way, and when I do I will rip you apart."

Gabriel snorts and extends an arm, flailing it mockingly. "Oh no. Someone help me. I'm so terrified. Look at me - I'm positively trembling with fear. I knew it was a good thing I stopped wearing sequins." Gabriel drops his arm and grins at Sam, tongue poking out from between his teeth. "You gonna punish me, big boy? Teach me a lesson?"

Sam grits his teeth and starts casting about for something, perhaps a weapon, or a knife to cut himself and draw a banishing sigil, while Gabriel watches in amusement.

"Need a hand there, champ?"

Enough of this. "Gabriel. _Brother._ I am asking."

Dean once told him, while drinking from a bottle of whisky, that eyes are the windows to the soul. Castiel had been adamant that no, they were not, but Dean assured him it was true. That one could discern many things about a person from what they projected from their eyes. Dean also said one could discern many things about a person by the car they drove, but his wisdom about the powers of a gaze stayed with Castiel.

He recognizes the power in Gabriel's gaze, enough that he can see through the mirth there, casting the green of his irises into something deeper, darker. Castiel can see bits of him there - the real him, hidden in order to walk the mortal world with ease - and feels the slow dissipation of his own Grace all the more keenly.

"Asking, huh?" Gabriel says slowly, as if savoring the word. He shrugs and walks over to where Dean lies. "So, what did Sleeping Beauty do? Hit on a wood sprite? Find Gedembai and cop a feel? If that's the case, then homeboy here is lucky a coma is all he got away with."

Gabriel closes his eyes and lifts a hand, fragile human fingers imbued with power, and places his fingers upon Dean in the same fashion Castiel had. Neck, temple, jaw. Pulse points in a human body were once sites through which the Holy Word was received. Before Man was cast out of the Garden.

"If you try anything -"

"Sam, Gabriel will not," Castiel says, cutting a look at him. Because if Gabriel deliberately ruins this, then no torture Sam could ever dream of would compare to what Castiel will do.

For a moment, nothing happens, and there is something tight and straining inside of him. Perhaps anticipation. It makes him itchy, as if his skin does not fit, and he shifts in a vain attempt to find some sort of relief. If this is what Sam suffered when he performed this, Castiel will apologize.

He turns to do just that when that muscle in Gabriel's jaw twitches again, and his brows beetle in a frown.

Gabriel opens his eyes and squints down at the body in the bed, confusion written across his face, followed quickly by a dawning of disbelief.

"Gabriel?" Castiel prompts, the bone-white hand of fear gripping him in his gut, holding him fast. "Is it -"

"That can't be right," Gabriel says to himself, scoffing. He visibly shakes himself, loosening his shoulders before tipping Dean's head back so that the chin points up.

"Hey -" Sam begins, throwing Castiel a worried glance.

"Cork it, Andre," Gabriel mutters, using his thumb, middle, and fourth fingers to coax Dean's lips into parting. Something hot races through Castiel at the sight, but he holds his tongue and continues to watch Gabriel's admittedly clinical ministrations.

He does not know what to expect, but Gabriel forcing his hand into Dean's open mouth and throat is a shock, and he can't muster up the coherence to quell Sam's outraged shout. Sam's thirst for blood is slaked by Gabriel removing his hand, fingers curled into a fist and doing nothing to stopper the light that pours out from between his fingers.

"What the hell," Sam breathes, horrified.

Gabriel's fingers unfurl slowly and it flutters weakly on his palm, this tiny globule of light, this nameless creature. Castiel knows it, has seen it before somewhere, some_when_, but he cannot place it. For a moment he sees a giant tree surrounded by balls of light, and then it's gone. Gabriel does not seem to share Castiel's problem, holding it up with grim recognition.

"Well, shit," Gabriel says on a low whistle, studying the thing, watching as it attempts to lift a crushed wing made of gossamer and thought and light. He snorts, shaking his head, and sounds so terribly sad. Pitying. "You little idiots. What did you do?"

Sam steps forward, fear and hope warring in his voice when he gasps out, "Do you know what it is?"

"Yeah," Gabriel says, sounding for all the world as if he wished he didn't.

"Can you help him?" Castiel asks, quietly, unable to look away from it.

Gabriel shakes his head, peering at the thing on his palm, rolling it absently with a finger. "Sorry, kids, no can do. But I know someone who can."


	3. Two

**Two.****  
><strong>**"Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together."**

The Star Garnet diner in Kellogg, Idaho boasts the best ice cream sodas in the United States, and has done so since its establishment in 1984. It has become somewhat of a staple to the townspeople of Kellogg, as there isn't another retro diner around for miles and miles. The red vinyl booths and soda fountains are as genuine as the 1950s themselves had been, and all the high school boys covet the day when the current soda jerk will leave town for college and one of them will be lucky enough to take his place, keeping them in high social standing and very popular with the girls.

The diner has never been closed for any reason. Debbie loves her customers too much.

"And yeah, the ice cream sodas are good, but the burgers aren't half bad either," Gabriel says, surveying the bright red window trim and the soft hum of jukebox music coming from inside.

Sam rubs at the corner of his eye and visibly tries to quell his mounting anger. "And we're here _why_, exactly?"

Castiel would like to know this as well. When Gabriel had promised them someone who would help, he had imagined it would have found them in perhaps in Liang Bua or Son Doong, places where old magic still lingers and in some cases thrives. There is a ten'nyo in Yasuoka happily married to the man who stole her hagoromo, and he knows she performs ritual blessings every spring. Hardly anything so powerful that it would gain the notice of Heaven, but it's enough to change fate once in a while.

Gabriel rocks on his heels. "The one we need to see? Owns this diner. Debbie. Well, _Iris_ if you want to get technical, but I don't think she goes by that anymore. It's been a long time since I've seen her. There was a… thing."

"Look," Sam says through gritted teeth, "it's not that I don't appreciate you helping us. I do. I'm all about the appreciation. Especially with you taking time out of your probably very busy schedule of killing people over and over for no reason -"

"Get to the point, Goliath," Gabriel says, obviously bored.

"What the hell is going on? What's wrong with Dean? What was that thing you pulled out of him? Who's Iris?" It's the exhaustion forcing these questions out, stretching Sam's voice and causing the shadows under his eyes. Castiel cannot look at him for long, dropping his gaze and looking elsewhere. He does not like to see Sam in such a state.

Castiel turns to Gabriel, who studies the diner with an almost academic air. He, too, would like to know why Iris is somehow involved in this. As far as he knows, she dropped from the pagan pantheon years ago, although none in Heaven knew why. She had acted as a liaison to the Principalities for eons, expanding her services as a messenger to keep the Choirs abreast of happenings in the mortal realm. Although he knows with whom she associated, and the thought does not sit well with him.

"Why Iris?" He asks softly, echoing Sam's question, and Gabriel finally turns to him with something sharp in his grin.

"Haven't figured it out yet, bro? Not much for connecting the dots, are you?" He looks back at the diner and visibly steels himself. "Let me do the talking, please. She's going to throw a bitch fit when she sees us; no need to have one of you dimwits open your mouths and make things worse."

That Gabriel, an archangel of Heaven, could be cowed by a fallen pagan deity is almost laughable, and he wants to say something to that effect, but there is something quiet and worried in Gabriel's gaze. _Windows to the soul, Cas, I'm telling you._ Something is wrong about this whole thing.

There is a small bell hanging above the doorway that jingles as Gabriel pushes the door open grandly, arms wide and disposition bright. Castiel allows Sam to go in before him. Sam is more than capable of taking care of himself, but he feels slightly better knowing he is between Sam and the things that would attack from behind. Lack of sleep and desperation are not valuable characteristics for a hunter of Sam's caliber.

The diner is empty, cool from the artificially cold air that blows from vents in the ceiling, but the tabletops are clean and the vinyl seats a vivid red. The setup is shockingly brilliant and warm; each table holds brightly colored condiments and flowers of all shades in red vases. The pictures on the walls - all of young men and women with painted grins, holding ice cream cones or glass bottles of soda - are framed in pinks and blues and purples. It's... sunny. Bright. A place where children could spend hours, talking and laughing and gorging themselves on sweet things. Castiel wonders if Dean and Sam ever went to places like this when they were younger, or if John Winchester's deep-seated vendetta did not allow for it. Perhaps they were too busy, or too out of place.

From behind the counter emerges a woman, dressed like one of the girls in the framed pictures, a white button-up shirt and gray-streaked hair pulled high into a tail. Her face is lined around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines. This is not her real face, but very well ought to be. Whatever power she possesses is visible to Castiel, but it is secondary to the veneer she wears. It is more suited for her, more of a comfortable fit.

"Iris, my little rainbow, it's been so -" Gabriel stumbles back unexpectedly, hands flying to where an iridescent patch of light has covered his mouth. His fingers pass through it as he attempts to tear it away, but it remains fast.

"Welcome to the Star Garnet!" Iris says with a cheery smile, her wrinkles pulling as her cheeks puff out. "What can I get you boys? I don't mean to toot my own horn, but we make the best ice cream sodas in these United States! The secret's in the ice cream - we get it shipped from Boston! Brigham's is the only brand we'll use. Makes it a little more filling. Or we can fire up some old fashioned hamburgers if you're hungry!" It's directed at himself and Sam, who blinks and sends a startled glance at Castiel, as if he is too afraid to trust this cheerful sell.

Gabriel grunts, still attempting to remove his gag.

"How about you, Loki? Can I get you anything? Chocolate shake? Root beer float? Double-scoop ice cream sundae?" A dark smile curls her lips when Gabriel cannot answer, frighteningly out of place on her older features. "I guess not."

She moves out from behind the counter and appraises Gabriel with cool eyes, sharper and much deeper than the human she is impersonating ought to have, and suddenly Castiel can only see what lies beneath. "You have a lot of nerve coming here, Loki, especially after what you pulled the last time we saw each other. How many years _has_ it been, by the way? Seems like just yesterday you were burning down my temples and sleeping with all my priestesses. Ah, but what is the loss of purity in the face of a good joke? Isn't that what you told me?"

Gabriel says something, muffled, looking entirely displeased with the whole situation.

"Perhaps you have come to make amends," Iris supposes, casting a critical eye upon Castiel and Sam. "You always did keep the loveliest company. What gifts have you brought me, Loki? What could I possibly use them for? I am in Kellogg, Idaho; these are no longer the days of the old gods. These are the days of _scripture_ and holy _rot_. Can you not feel the stretch of the Fallen Bird as he unleashes his fury upon what once belonged to us? Angels are such... children. Grasping, whiny, devious little dogs, all vying for the chance to lick the boot of a holy hoax."

The words are not meant to offend anyone in the diner, but Castiel feels each one as sharply as he feels the burns on his Grace, barbed and poisonous. That relations between the pagans and his brethren were so strained, he hadn't known. Iris speaks of the angels with such distain.

"Uh," Sam pipes up from in front of him, "Not to sound rude or anything, but we're not gifts."

Iris blinks, then narrows her eyes. The shades of the diner roll down to the windowsills, blocking out the sunlight as effectively as nightfall, leaving them to rely solely upon the fluorescent lights of the diner. She tilts her head slightly, lashes falling, and the air crackles with power, causing the hairs on Castiel's arms and the back of his neck to stand on end, and entirely new and odd sensation. Human bodies feel so much, so often. He will go mad with it even before the Gates close.

There is a small spark of color above Iris's head that spins downward, erasing her wrinkles and spotted skin, leaving behind smooth flesh the color of burnished slate, iridescent lines that shine when they catch the artificial light, all of them drawn in ancient Greek spells carved into her skin. The human form she had taken, the old woman, stretches, limbs elongating until she stands tall above all of them, clothes disappearing into a translucent shrift. Her hair falls out of its hold, growing thicker and wilder until the strands disappear into multi-colored light, shifting as if in water, going from mango to cerulean to lemon to viridian to vermillion to lavender. When her eyes slide open, there is nothing human about them, the tiny lashes replaced by the same force that is her hair, her eyes two spots of brilliant light that burn with the fury of a newborn star. This is a goddess of the old world, created from the very earth, one of the earliest gifts his Father bestowed.

"If Loki has not come to pay for his crimes, then I do not see why you stand before me, calling me by a name long since forgotten," Iris says, and it sounds like the wind upon Olympus Mons, unheard by human ears; like the creatures at the bottom of the sea that have not been released from their cages, held fast by Seraphim-forged steel. She is glorious and, once, Castiel would have liked to hear her in all her splendor. But now she makes his head ache.

Sam cries out, covering his ears with his hands, and Castiel feels almost guilty he is not so far gone as to feel Iris's words that keenly.

"Might want to lower the volume, Iris," Gabriel says, amused, seated at the counter and spinning on his stool. "You know how humans are with their ears. All those little bones inside…"

"Stop it," Castiel hisses, rage bubbling inside of him. If he did not think it would result in his death, he would attack in some fashion, just to get Gabriel to react. "This is solving _nothing_. Iris, mother of light and liaison of the gods, please. I am asking... _we_ are asking for your help."

Iris tilts her head, eyes flashing with interest. "Oh? And why would my services be required? As I said, it is no longer the time of the gods. Have you no - Wait. What is that?"

Her gaze sharpens, the white light of her eyes darkening to a smoldering gray, and she takes a step toward him, confusion and the slow dawning of realization mingling upon her face. She lifts a hand, reaching out until her fingers, sharp as angel-forged steel, capture his jaw and dig in, holding him. Dark amusement is chased by a smile as she regards him like he has seen so many of his brethren look at humans. With the smug superiority borne of a stronger power. With disgust.

"Oh my," she murmurs, and the sound grates like nothing he's ever heard. "What fools they breed in the clouds above. An angel. Here, in my home. How very surprising. Are you lost, little bird? Why would Loki bring me such a treasure?" Iris smiles and tightens her hold, breaking the skin and spilling blood into the air. She licks her lips, her tongue flickering in a series of bright colors, and grins. "What glorious things I could do to you; what terrible, glorious things. They would be knocking down my door for pieces of you. And, oh, look at you. So tarnished. Is this what becomes of your kind when down in the mud with the rest of us, so far away from your absent master?"

He has enough power that he could still throw her off and keep her away, should the need arise, should her fingers dig in and find bone. If Gabriel will not intervene on his behalf, he will take it into his own hands. He will throw her off, take Sam and find someone else who will help. Certainly whatever has happened to Dean can be cured by someone other than Iris.

"Hey," Sam barks, standing up and shaking off the effects of Iris's thunderous voice. "Leave him alone! He's here because we need your help."

Iris smiles at Sam, altogether wonderful and terrible. "And you... I can feel the Black shifting in you. I think I will take great pleasure in lighting you up from the inside. You will be beautiful, rent in color, as only a goddess of the skies can deliver."

Gabriel, still seated and leaning back against the counter, snaps his fingers and conjures up an ice cream sundae complete with whipped cream and a cherry, like the kind Castiel has seen in black-and-white television programs. He shovels a heaping spoonful into his mouth. "Go easy on the kids, huh? I was the one who brought them here. And _no_, you can't eat the angel. Not that he'd be missed or anything; kid's kind of unpopular these days, right, Sparky?"

It takes Castiel a moment to realize Gabriel is talking about him. So human, with his nicknames and ease of speech. Will the words come so fluidly from his own tongue once his Grace has left him?

Iris huffs and releases him, throwing him to stumble back a few feet. Her voice has softened to human levels when she speaks again. "Then why am I entertaining him, if I cannot rend him limb from limb? You've some nerve, bringing one of them here."

Gabriel shrugs, puts his sundae on the counter behind him, and holds up two closed fists. "Pick one."

"Seriously," Sam says, disbelieving. "We're still playing games? You son of a bitch, Gab-"

"_Pick_ one," Gabriel says loudly, overriding Sam, simmering anger boiling just below the surface. Castiel, rubbing his fingers through the slowly congealing blood on his jaw, can read it there in his eyes.

Iris stares for a moment before nodding toward Gabriel's left hand, which opens and reveals nothing. The outrage on her face is gone in a flash when Gabriel opens his remaining hand, fingers unfurling from the winged creature of light, its glow somewhat dimmed since the last time Castiel had seen it.

"Recognize this?"

She exhales roughly, almost a gasp, and takes a step back. "Why... Why have you come?" she demands, eyes still training on the thing in Gabriel's hand. It attempts to stretch its wings, but one is still crushed and looks to be fading.

Gabriel up-ends his sundae all over the clean countertop, vanilla and chocolate ice cream meshing into a dirty stream, and uses the glass to trap the creature. It rolls around in its prison, tapping lightly against the walls. "Seems we've got an issue."

Iris looks away, the lines on her face bleeding red, orange, and gold with rage. "I care not."

"An... acquaintance of mine seems to have fallen into an unexplained slumber," Gabriel continues blithely, tapping curiously at the sundae glass. "There was nothing of him left in his body."

"This is not my concern," Iris says loftily and moves toward the back of the diner, possibly to disappear forever. Castiel steps into her path and holds firm, refusing her passage. He will not let her leave until she has heard their complaint.

"Move, _dog_."

"No." He squares his shoulders the way Sam and Dean both do when they want to appear more threatening. "You _will_ listen to him. You_will_ hear us out."

"I _will_ strip the flesh from your human vessel and make you watch as I feast upon it," she grits out, voice trembling. "You do not know what you ask. You do not know what you have brought to me. This is naught to do with me any longer! He threw me aside! I have no claim to his thoughts or motives. Whatever has happened to your _acquaintance_ is not my concern!"

"You will _let me finish_," Gabriel thunders, and the condiments on all the tables tremble with the force of his voice. How Iris cannot guess who truly sits before her, Castiel doesn't know. It is so obvious that the diminutive man seated on the spinning stool is not a mere Trickster. There is too much there to ignore, to not see. "So, since you were the last one with him, I thought we might ask you just what your boy's been up to."

Her bright eyes dart from Castiel, to Sam, then to Gabriel.

"I meant it," Iris says slowly, painfully, as if each word is tearing her asunder, "when I said I do not know. I have not seen him since he thrust me from Demos Oneiroi."

Castiel sucks in a small breath and looks to Gabriel for confirmation, unable to stopper a distressed noise from escaping when Gabriel gives a short nod.

Demos Oneiroi. It was a story the angels would tell of a plane the Father created for only one to use and rule. Where the walls were made of starlight and the gates separated so Men could dream without the temptation of trespassing. There could be no mortal that crossed into it, for then he would be lost to the Kingdom forever. Deeper than Hell, further than Purgatory. The dream realm.

"He... You're talking about Morpheus," Sam says quietly, tiredly, and Castiel cannot prevent a small thrill of pride. Sam has always been so clever, so well-read. It is only natural he should put the pieces together. "The god of dreams."

"The God of Everything," Iris murmurs, snorting and shaking her head. "You know not of whom you speak. Your stories, your myths, say nothing of the truth."

"You speak blasphemy," Castiel growls, unable to hold back the disgust that slithers up his diaphragm at her words. "The God of Everything belongs to Heaven. Our Father -"

"Your _Father_ was given his name because Morpheus wished it so. Your Heaven, your Hell, your Earth? All dreams made come to pass. He dreamt up your _Father_ and gave him the power over this mudball, and your _Father_ could not even stop it from falling into destruction because his servants are having a bit of a quibble. You think your God holds dominion over anything beyond this world? He does not. Your Heaven is tethered here; you know nothing of the dreams he has put into motion elsewhere. Humans and angels - both shoddy creations by Morpheus's greatest failure. I see you are shocked, or that you simply cannot fathom there are others more powerful than your _Father_." She smiles, delighted, in the face of his shock and revulsion. "Oh? Does this really surprise you? How narrow-minded your Father has made you."

The lungs he stole from Jimmy expand and contract wildly, air pushing in and out at a rate the body cannot handle. He can feel the carbon dioxide in his blood leech from him, expiring more than he is taking in. The words Iris is saying with such joy cannot be true; it is the highest form of blasphemy - idolatry - and his very core aches with the force of his anger.

He looks to Gabriel for help, but he stares at Iris with something sad in his eyes, something that rings with a terrible truth.

"What about Lucifer?" Sam asks, bringing a hand that is meant to be comforting upon Castiel's shoulder, but it only serves to make him feel even more constricted. "We've been trying to stop him from bringing down the Apocalypse. What happens if he wins? You'll die, too. You, and Morpheus -"

Iris turns a wicked smile on him, and Castiel feels the floor fall away. "If the bratty child does end life on this miserable rock, Morpheus will doubtfully take notice. It will not be missed. I will not be missed."

Sam covers his mouth with a trembling hand and closes his eyes, shaking breath muffled by his palm.

Castiel knows what kinds of things are running rampant through that too-human mind. _Why have we been fighting? Why do our sacrifices mean nothing? Why are we so unimportant? Why us?_ He cannot imagine what Sam is feeling now that his entire view of the coming Apocalypse has changed, and he would have tried to help Sam parse through those emotions if he were not so wrapped up in his own.

Why did Gabriel say nothing? Trapped in the holy fire in some warehouse, facing down Sam and Dean, revealing to them there would be no way around Armageddon... Why not then? Why not drop whatever facade he carries and tell them Heaven holds no sway, that... that the angels, that God, were nothing more than characters once found in a dream?

He wants to know if the archangels - those who are allowed to stand before God, whoever that might be - know of their place, of whatever role they play in Morpheus's creation. He wants to know if this would change their views on Humanity, if the discovery of being considered the lowest of the low would help foster some kind of community with Man.

"Poor little bird," Iris coos, sounding as sympathetic as a demon before taking a host. "You _are_ lost."

"You know Morpheus," Sam surmises quietly.

"I do. I did."

"Did?" Gabriel perks up at this, eyes lighting with interest. "You guys on the outs?"

Iris _shimmers_, the carvings in her skin flashing red, then bleeding to a murky green. "I was his companion, his _wife_, since he spun the gods into being. The first and foremost. And then..." Her voice shakes, with suppressed rage or sorrow Castiel can't tell. "And then one day he threw me away, like trash, _for_ trash. For an imperfect _beast_. He found someone new, someone far more interesting than I. Said he would take him from this plane and _bring him to rule the First Realm_ - can you even imagine? Since its inception, none but us would cross into Demos Oneiroi, and now he wants this... this _creature_? How is that fair?"

Dean. She's talking about Dean.

He turns to find Sam staring back, the same conclusion settling in his eyes, around his shoulders. Now they have their answer. Now the reason for enlisting Iris's help is clear. With that, Castiel can make his request.

"Can you get us there?"

Iris startles. "I beg your pardon?"

"Demos Oneiroi. Can you take us there?" Because if they can somehow steal into the dream realm, they can find Dean and bring him back.

She stares at him for a long moment, then looks at Gabriel. "Does the angel joke? Is this humor?"

"Probably not," Gabriel says with a shrug. "Castiel, ease up for a second."

Before Gabriel finishes his sentence, there is a noticeable change in the atmosphere of the diner. The air feels heavier, weighted down with a thousand injustices and words unsaid. Iris slowly turns to face Castiel as if he were a work of art... or a sideshow animal in a rural circus.

"What did he call you?" She whispers, the lines in her skin shifting to a deep red. "The name?"

"Castiel," he says, then wishes he could take it back. The giving of names is never wise. To have one's name is to have control.

But Iris does not react. At all. She only stares for a long moment that seems to stretch into eternity. Finally, she drops her gaze and turns her back to him.

"Passage into Demos Oneiroi? I hope you have brought sufficient payment."

Sam steps forward, hands raised placatingly. "A deal. We'll make a deal with you. A favor from us, whenever you need it, whatever you need."

Iris laughs and turns. "A deal? Oh, my tiny mutt, I am a goddess, not a demon. I do not make deals. I deal in transactions with physical revenue. I doubt there is anything you possess or could possess that would tempt me into bringing you to the Gate of Horn."

The Gate of Horn. The gate of true dreams.

"You know, a lot of people would kill for a favor from the Winchesters," Sam pushes, practically vibrating with the need for her to accept.

Iris snorts. "I am not 'most people'."

"Really?" Gabriel asks, all sweetness and shifting Grace. Oh. _Oh._ "There isn't _anything_ you need? Acolytes? Temples? I'll find all the virginities I took from your maidens and put them back -"

"I run a diner in Idaho," Iris says flatly. "I no longer have need for any of those things, and I somehow doubt these fools could -"

"My Grace."

Iris falls silent.

Castiel swallows, throat suddenly dry, clicking as he forces the words out. It pains him to even say such things. "My Grace. You could take my Grace as payment, to do with it what you will."

Sam places a hand on his arm from behind. "Cas, no -"

"I have no need for it," Castiel grits out, holding Iris's gaze as best he can. He knows he is faltering, that his sales pitch is full of fear and revulsion, but it is the only thing he can think of that she would want. "You said they would knock down your door for pieces of me. I can imagine that an angel's Grace is quite the commodity."

At this, Gabriel slides off the stool and approaches Castiel, faced shadowed with an almost brotherly concern. It is a refreshing change from the usual smug expression he wears, and Castiel feels somewhat warmed by it.

"That's quite the sacrifice, bro," Gabriel says slowly, brows drawn. "Look, even I can appreciate your loyalty to Things One and Two. I can feel where Lucifer burned you; those wounds are still fresh. Holy fire has that effect. But your Grace... No angel has ever bartered with his Grace; you don't know it won't kill you if you try this. There are other ways, other things -"

"No," Iris says, suddenly loud and unforgiving in this small space. "I will accept nothing less than the angel's Grace."

Sam takes Castiel by the shoulders and shakes him lightly, head bowed and grip tight. He looks so very tired, so much that Castiel would ease him into a deep slumber, if only for a little while. Dean never liked to see Sam stretched so thin, and neither does Castiel.

"Cas, no," Sam says. "We can find another way around it. And - and you're hurt? Why didn't you say? How bad is it?"

"My guess is Sparky got himself in a fix with everyone's favorite devil without a cause," Gabriel grunts, knocking the toe of his sneaker lightly against Castiel's calf, hitting right where the holy fire's burns would be if they transubstantiated onto his human flesh. "Smarts, don't it? When'd this happen?"

Castiel glances at Sam, then down at the floor. "Carthage."

Sam sucks in a breath.

Gabriel nods. "Yeah, I heard about that. Sucks. Now, if _I_ had been running the show, I would've sent them out with a bang. Literally. Death by orgy is totally the way to go."

Iris clears her throat, drawing their attention, and smiles cruelly. She must have been beautiful as a goddess, spanning the skies, brighter and more colorful than the sun. And to have been held in such esteem as to be the wife of Morpheus, she must have been devastating as well.

"I will not wait much longer, little bird. If you are to pass into the First Realm, it must be now."

"You don't have to do this," Sam says again.

Castiel shakes his head, feels the way his spine moves with him. "Dean does not have the luxury of time. None of us do. It has to be now; it has to be this."

"But..." Sam falters, closes his mouth, then tries again. "How much more, Cas? How much more are you going to give for us?"

There had been days in the beginning when Castiel wished he had pulled Sam Winchester out of Hell instead. Sam, in his kindness and compassion, would have been infinitely more grateful than Dean, would have listened to whatever orders he gave on Heaven's behalf, would have elevated Castiel into the higher echelons in the Choirs. All this, and more, and the world would have ended in weeks.

He will give whatever he has to if it means Dean will open his eyes.

"Iris," Castiel says, stepping away from Sam's desperation and Gabriel's glaring disappointment to face her.

She straightens at her name, still smiling that awful smile, and beckons him forth. He goes easily and can almost pretend he isn't terrified at the prospect of losing his Grace in one fell swoop. With the closing of the Gates, it would have been quick, but gradual. This will undo everything he is, and he knows she will make him feel every bit of it as she rips it from him.

"Oh, little bird, do not be so afraid," Iris sings with obvious delight. "Just think: with this, you will be in Demos Oneiroi. And it is better that you give this to me. You could not use it in the First Realm. It would not be allowed."

For Dean, he reminds himself as the fear threatens to consume him. It is a means to an end. This is for Dean.

The moment he steps within perhaps five feet of Iris, her arm shoots out, impossibly long, and talon-sharp fingers plunge into the hollow beneath his human ribcage. A scream builds but gets caught where her wrist twists into his diaphragm, stealing his breath with the need to pull himself away from this invasion. His hands fly up of their own volition to wrap around her arm, but his fingers pass through as if it were made of smoke and cloud.

_A soldier of Thursday, to wield the Lord's name in battle against whatever force challenges the Kingdom of your Father, now and forever until the last moment of Time._

No more. She is taking it away.

His legs buckle from under him, but Iris's arm, oddly solid where it presses against things inside of him, slots right in the dip of his ribcage and holds him up. Distantly he can hear someone shouting - Sam, probably - but it's lost in all of his own screams. He has never felt pain like this. It is like holy fire consuming him, like the forty years of utter frigidness he experienced in Hell. Jimmy Novak's body rebels, struggling and trying to twist away from it, instinct screaming for it to protect itself from this attack, but Iris holds fast and Castiel attempts to calm his heart, lest it stop beating from the shock. He can't afford to have the body die as he is losing the power that would allow him to bring it back to life.

Iris hums, and Castiel watches through slitted eyes as her face lights up, as the entire room seems to grow impossibly bright. It's coming from him, from where her arm and his chest meet. From the tips of his fingers and toes drags all his Grace, flaking and detaching from the walls of his vessel, pulling upward to where her hand is in his core, gathering there like ants to something sweet. He has grown too tired to fight and attempts to grab her arm once more, but his hand drops in midair and he hangs, a marionette of his own making.

"Almost done," Iris says, grinning widely, closing her fingers into a fist inside of him. He garbles his words, whatever they would have been, and drops his head forward, unable to keep holding it up.

She slowly begins to withdraw her hand, holding the vibrating, glowing piece of him that still lives. The fingers of her other hand do something complicated, too complicated for him to understand now, and when they stop, a vial appears between her thumb and forefinger. He drops to the floor as she presses his Grace into the glass, stoppering it with a satisfied huff.

"Thank you for your prompt payment, _Castiel_," Iris says above him, emphasizing his name. What used to be his name. How can he still be Castiel when what made him Castiel is no longer his?

"Cas," Sam gasps, falling to his knees to help him. Cas. It will have to be the name Dean gave him so many months ago. Useless, human Cas.

"Now give us passage," Cas whispers, allowing Sam to slowly help him to his feet. His utterly human feet, tethered to the ground and without the power to lift to the sky. He will never fly again. It's lost to him now. He will never move between the atmospheres, beneath the oceans, not without the aid of human steel. He is at the mercy of his body's limitations. "You have your payment. Now let us pass through."

"All this to rescue a human," Iris scoffs, lifting the vial before her eyes and shaking it. His Grace - her angel's Grace - bounces against the walls of its glass prison, having taken the form of a shard of something beautiful, like the inside of a shell.

"Don't be a bitch, Iris. You got what you asked for. Now give him what you owe." Gabriel snarls, coming to stand on his other side. He presses two fingers two his forehead and Castiel feels the warmth of healing wash over him, renewing the strength he lost, calming his pounding heart and overtaxed lungs. "You okay there, kiddo?"

"I'm fine," Cas says, unable to take his eyes off of Iris. "Our passage, Iris."

Iris makes a low bark in her throat, a dismissal of some kind, and waves her hand for them to follow her as she disappears into a back room. Sam glares in the direction of the door.

"I don't trust her."

"Self-preservation instincts?" Gabriel laughs. "_You_? Now I've seen everything."

Cas pushes away from both Sam and Gabriel's stifling hands, slowly making the way to the door on unsteady feet, using the backs of the stools for support as he goes. It is an unpleasant feeling, this odd lightness fighting with his heavy human body. Humans must feel this terrible dichotomy constantly, insubstantial and weighted all the time, as if the mind knows what the body does not: that the flesh is a prison for something more. Though that something more is now much less in the scheme of things.

He grips the doorframe, the wood unforgiving and harsh against the pads of his fingers, and peers into the room attached to the main part of the diner. Iris stands in the light of a tiny fluorescent bulb, the shadows catching on the wrinkles of her face like spindle-like fingers cupping her cheeks and stroking over the corners of her eyes. The way she looks at him is frightening. There is a hatred there he has never before been privy to, but it is quickly hidden behind a mask of studied blankness. The human face is supposed to be expressive; Dean and Sam - Dean in particular - use the many muscles in their cheeks and mouths and eyebrows and foreheads to convey the simplest emotions. Cas does not like that he can't read her.

She stands over cleared floor, surrounded by boxes and bags of non-perishable food and packages of paper napkins.

"Lie down, little bird. It is time to sleep," she says lightly. It sounds like a threat disguised in the lace and frills of women's clothing.

"How can I know you won't betray us to Morpheus?" He asks quietly as Sam and Gabriel both enter the room, which seems to shrink impossibly with all of them in it. "How do we know you are not still tied to him?"

She smiles. It is a terrible, sad thing. "Oh, I am not the foremost in his heart, I can assure you. Do you honestly believe I would be here, in this body, if I were?"

Sam clears his throat, stepping to stand next to Cas. "So... How does this work?"

"You lie down and go to sleep while I... usher you to where you need to go." She gestures to the floor at her feet. "You are welcome to do so whenever you feel like it."

Sam snorts and stomps over, all human indignation, dropping to his knees gracefully and then onto his bottom, finally lying supine, staring up at her with glaring distrust. He gestures for Cas to join him.

"Your turn, kiddo," Gabriel says from behind him, clapping him on the shoulder with a strong, steady hand.

Cas's heart, his now and forever, beats a heavy thrum against his ribcage and something sharp sings through him. Adrenaline, he realizes. He is scared of whatever will come of this, of whatever Iris will do to them once they no longer have control of their bodies. It would be so easy for her to pierce their hearts with the utensils on the tabletops. They would never know. Or perhaps she will simply trap them in slumber forever, leave their bodies out in the back of the diner to starve and wither away until Death comes to claim them.

"Cas," Sam prompts loudly. "Let's get this show on the road."

When he reaches Sam, he slowly brings his body down to the floor, shaking arms attempting to hold his weight until the floor can do it. He lies on his back, rolling his shoulders until the linoleum no longer bites into bone, swallowing at the way Iris stares down at him. He and Sam are both at her mercy now.

She kneels swiftly at Sam's side, eyes still blank. "I am feeling somewhat generous today, so I suggest you listen to my words very closely. I will not repeat myself."

"All right," Sam says.

"Human myth and legend are such... funny things. You humans think yourselves so clever with your creation stories and the like, but what you do not understand is these stories and truths were _given_ to you as gifts, so that you may understand your own origins. But since you twist them until they are hardly recognizable, I do not know what you know of Demos Oneiroi."

"It is the dream realm," Cas says. It is known throughout Heaven as such, but none spoke of it other than that. "It is where dreams are manufactured for humans."

"There are two gates," Iris says softly, her eyes gentling and growing distant, wistful, wanting for something that is no longer hers to claim. "The Gate of Ivory, through which humans enter in order to see the wondrous and monstrous things they do in slumber, plucked from the branches of the Elm."

There is a flash of a tree surrounded by fluttering, golden light, but it's gone in an instant.

"And the Gate of Horn, through which no human has ever been invited to travel. It is through the Gate of Horn that Demos Oneiroi can be found." She pauses, then taps a finger to her chin. "Although... there _was_ the occasional accident. Humans are such stupid, curious things, slipping through the Gate, hoping to find a dream and instead finding themselves trapped for all time."

It is not surprising that humans stumbled into the one place not meant for them. They do that so often, it seems. Perhaps one day Cas will be one of them, bumbling and tripping into danger without regard for his own safety.

"I did not design the First Realm," Iris continues softly, still so far away. "But I can guess that... you will find it to be a series of doors. Your minds are so limited, after all. Yes, I think it will be doors for you, an endless corridor of them, all waiting to be opened, all leading you everywhere and nowhere at all."

"So, how do we get to Morpheus?" Sam inquires, irritable and shifting next to Cas. "Is there a trick to this?"

Iris blinks away the haze in her eyes and turns a sharp gaze upon them, smiling cruelly. "Oh, there are tricks everywhere. You will be in Morpheus's own realm and he will use your own minds against you. Your greatest fears, your greatest desires... all will become his to be used as weapons. There will be nowhere safe for you."

"Fucking hell, Iris," Gabriel groans loudly from where he leans against the doorframe. "Is this even possible?"

She looks up, still smiling. "I trust they will find out that, no, they cannot win this. Morpheus will not allow it."

Sam turns his head to find Cas's gaze, some nameless fear on his face, something that goes beyond the despair that they will not be able to pull Dean away from his captor. It is as if Iris's sharp, absolute words have severed the last thread of hope onto which Sam was holding.

Slowly, feeling dust and grit beneath his fingers, Cas moves his hand until it curls around Sam's. "You and your brother have not yet encountered a foe you could not overcome. I have faith you will remain undefeated."

"We," Sam says shakily, gratitude in the way he squeezes Cas's hand. "We're gonna get him out."

Gabriel whistles low and shifts onto another leg. "Well, boys, if there's anyone stupid enough to try and take on the granddaddy of them all, it'd be you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, asshole," Sam grumbles, holding onto Cas's hand tightly as Iris places her fingers over their eyebrows, her nails brushing their lashes.

Cas's eyelids feel heavy almost immediately, too much for him to keep his eyes open. He tries, lashes fluttering, but darkness clouds at the edges of his vision, creeping like a black frost upon a windowpane. Sam yawns beside him and mutters something Cas cannot hear.

"Oh," Iris says, miles away. "I almost forgot to tell you. There are three doors you ought to be wary of. Trick doors, I suppose."

Cas struggles to fight against the soft caress of sleep, but it proves too lovely to battle. "One door will expel you from Demos Oneiroi and you will never be allowed back into the dream realm. One will trick your mind. One door will kill you. The stories of which humans seem to be so fond? The ones in which people are hit by trains or fall from buildings and die because of them? All very true. If you die in a dream, you will die permanently. That's not a problem, is it?"

He tries to say something against the obvious delight in her voice, but the darkness wraps its arms around him, swaddling him tightly, and he is gone.


	4. Three

**Three.****  
><strong>**"The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams, reason is unnecessary."**

"Cas."

He startles, standing and casting about for something familiar, but he is no longer in the diner in Kellogg, Idaho. This is someplace new, someplace different and somehow wrong. It looks like the many motels the Winchesters have stayed in, only nicer and larger, with plush carpeting beneath his feet and warm lighting. The walls are painted a soft white and there are framed paintings hanging in between each door, all of them non-descript and abstract subjects.

It is the doors that draw his attention.

In each wall, curving at the end of the corridor, are dozens of doors, all heavy wood with old, bronze knobs. There are no other markings. There is a break in the wall, allowing him to see across to the other side, which appears to be nothing except more doors.

This is what Iris had told them to expect. They are here. In Demos Oneiroi.

The angels - of all stations - had truly believed it to be a myth. Iris's role as liaison was more of a perfunctory, diplomatic thing, an acknowledgement of the old gods' place in the world despite that beliefs had shifted overwhelmingly in Heaven's favor. Not once did any of them, not in their petty fights and meetings and full-on wars, ever dare to think something lay beyond the boundaries of the Father's Kingdom. That the Father was not absolute.

No one knew. Not even Michael. And now here Castiel stands, a faceless soldier of God-turned-mortal, and he alone knows the truth.

He closes his eyes and exhales. His head feels simultaneously too big and small, and it hurts.

Sam, standing at the rail, looks up, squinting. "It looks kind of like this hotel we stayed at once. Dean'd hit it big gambling and we... well, treated ourselves. This swanky place just outside of Atlanta. The hallway never ended; it was all one floor, just spiraling up. It looks just like this."

Cas wants to ask what the difference is between a hotel and a motel, but it does not seem relevant. He mostly wants to fill the silence, as there is no other noise except for them. Sam's words echo in the giant, cylindrical space before fading altogether, leaving them with only the sound of their own breathing for comfort.

"All the doors appear to be the same," Cas says, moving to one of them, running his hands down the wood. It is unnaturally smooth, glossy. He pulls his hand away and rubs his fingers together, trying to capture the sensation. "We will be relying completely on chance."

"The luck of the draw," Sam snorts, rolling his shoulders. "Isn't Winchester Latin for 'shitty luck'?"

If memory serves, Winchester originated from the Welsh _Caer guenif_, or 'white city'.

"Should we go?" Cas has his hand on the knob of the door, ready to turn and throw it open, but Sam shakes his head once, emphatic.

"No," Sam says. "Never pick the first door. Let's walk a bit."

Cas slowly withdraws his hand, clenching it into a fist, and stares at the patterns in the wood of the door, wondering if it is one of the trick doors Iris warned them about. If he had opened it and stepped through, would his heart have stopped in his chest while he lay helpless in Iris's diner? Or would this door be the direct link to the inner sanctum of Morpheus's throne room? Would it have taken him straight to Dean? He hates not knowing. He hates not feeling power and thought and love and _Grace_ flowing through every part of him.

_Be calm_, he tells himself. Even if he had his Grace, it would make no difference here. They are in Morpheus's realm now. Everything that happens will be on Morpheus's terms.

Calm.

"All right."

Sam turns and starts down the hall, running his fingers over the walls and the doors, filling the air with a soft whisper, leaving Cas to follow him as he has always done with the Winchesters. It occurs to him that he has never led them anywhere, opting instead to remain a few steps back, as if he had not yet earned the right to walk in step with them. Perhaps now that he is one of their kind, down to their level, he will be given and will take that privilege.

They walk for what seems to be an eternity - perhaps time runs slower here or has no power at all - before Sam comes to a stop in front of a door on the left-hand side of the corridor.

"This one?" It takes a moment for Cas to realize it is a question, that Sam is looking for his input.

"Yes. This seems fine." It isn't. None of this is fine. Chances are whatever lies beyond this door will bring them no closer to finding Dean. Dean Winchester is such a loud, little marvel; that Cas can no longer hear or feel him makes him want to scream in fruitless rage. He dealt with the loss of the Host's Song - the voices of all his brothers and sisters - well enough; it sometimes astounds him the severing of contact with his own brethren is nothing compared to what he feels for a single, marked, _infuriating_, human man.

Somewhere, his old friend Balthazar is laughing hysterically.

He reaches for the knob, but a hand on his shoulder makes him pause.

"Cas." There is a terrible look in Sam's eyes, a mix of pity and sympathy Cas cannot disentangle. The smile Sam attempts to offer him dies in its infancy. "Are you… are you okay?"

"Yes."

Sam does not look convinced. "Cas, I'm a graduate of the Winchester School of 'No, Seriously, I'm Fine'. This isn't... You just lost... I hate to remind you, because I know you've gotta be... We're friends, right? I mean, I'm just worried. It all happened so fast and you haven't had any time to adjust, or even just breathe, and I'm... Cas, I don't know. I just want to make sure you're -"

"I'm fine," Cas says, holding up a hand to forestall the protest that is certainly brewing on Sam's tongue. "I have to be, Sam. Dean needs us both to be fine, regardless of... recent events. I will have time to adjust, as you say, after we take him out of Demons Oneiroi."

_We're friends, right?_

It's something he has not truly considered before this moment. He has always been in service to Dean, who carries Castiel's mark with him like a badge of honor. Everything he has done in the last year, both in Heaven and on Earth, has been for Dean, and in turn everything Dean has done has been for Sam. In a very roundabout way, everything Cas has done has also been in service of Sam. Sam, who is no longer the "boy with the demon blood". Sam is worried for his well-being. Sam is fighting against the same evils and injustices as him. Sam has not let him down. Ever.

"I released you from Bobby's panic room." The words come unexpectedly tumbling out of him, accidental to be sure, but they are now in the open, hanging between them.

Sam stares, blinks, and then nods. "Yeah, I know, Cas."

"I'm sorry." Cas straightens but finds he cannot stop speaking. His mouth has shaken off his control. "I did not... I was operating under orders I _knew_ were wrong, and I did it anyway. It's my fault it has come to this. I'm sorry, Sam."

The words are inadequate but the sentiment behind them is genuine. Regret is another emotion to which he must adapt and accept. It is entirely human to admit to one's faults. As an angel, he had no need for it, as everything he did was in the name of God. He has no such luxury anymore. His faults are now his own.

"If it wasn't that, it would've been something else." Sam shrugs. "It was a shitty thing to do, but... forget it, Cas. We're way past it. We're good."

_We're good._ It is how the Winchesters say 'all is forgiven'. Cas exhales and nods, feeling the weight lifting until he can no longer feel it. It is wonderful. This must be what confession is like for humans.

"Thank you," Cas says. "There is... much, I fear, that I am sorry for. That I will be sorry for."

"Welcome to Humanity," Sam says, grinning outright now. "Your gift basket will arrive in a week or so."

"Gift basket?" Is there a reward for joining the ranks of Mankind?

Sam shakes his head and turns his attention to the door. "Forget it."

Humor. Of course. He will have to learn how to use it in order to deflect the things that ought to be said. This is how humans live.

"So, we ready?"

The door innocuously stands before them, solid and waiting, the metal of the knob tarnished with what looks like time and use. The wood itself appears faded in color, as if the shine of gloss has rubbed away. He has seen such doors at Bobby's house, well-used and perhaps somehow loved. Whatever lies on the other side may be kinder to them than Cas previously thought.

"Yes."

Sam nods and Cas reaches for the knob, turning it firmly and pushing the door open, and they are on a street.

Sam frowns and turns in a circle, scanning the houses and trees. Cas has never been to this place, wherever they are. It is a... nice neighborhood, much like the one Jimmy Novak once lived in. The houses are painfully normal, the lawns well-kept. Most of the houses are white and have porches. Some have small garden beds with cheerful pink and white flowers, a couple have large bushes on either side of the staircases. There are mailboxes. There are children's toys on a few of the lawns, bright and plastic. The sidewalks are clean, the cars parked along the curbs small and nondescript. Behind the houses are the shadows of trees, the hum of insects and the twittering of birds filling the air. There is nothing amiss.

"Where is everyone?" Sam wonders aloud. There is nothing amiss except for all the people who are.

"I do not recognize this place," Cas says, studying one house that has a small car on its lawn, pink and with pedals. A child rides that, he thinks, perhaps pretending to be old enough to operate a vehicle like their parents. "Do you?"

Sam reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, squinting as he continues to scan the street for life. "Kinda...? I'm not sure. It seems... familiar, I guess. I mean, I can't really remember coming here, at least not for a hunt. You see a street sign anywhere?"

He does not. Frowning, Cas walks past Sam toward the house with the pink plastic child's car and climbs the five stairs leading to the front door. He moves to open it, but pauses. Humans do not like it when you enter uninvited. Knocking upon the door is considered polite. He knocks upon the door, takes a step back, and waits. Perhaps the owners of this home are somewhere deep within and it will take a moment for them to answer.

After a moment or two without any response, Cas turns and goes back to the street. "I do not believe anyone is here."

"Huh." Sam makes a face, then shrugs. "Okay. Well, let's walk around, see if we find anyone."

For a street, it is quite long, and he and Sam walk for a very long time before it breaks, the lines of the curb bending to form something new. There is no sign to designate the change as Cas has seen while seated in the back of the Impala, but it does not deter Sam, who walks along the asphalt as if he knows the path intimately.

Sam stops suddenly, eyes lighting on a silver car parked in front of a brown house. It is not as sleek and well-loved as the Impala, but he motions for Cas to follow as he approaches it. The driver's side door is unlocked and Sam sits inside, one leg still on the ground. He pulls down what Dean calls the visor, frowns at his reflection in the tiny mirror there, then pushes it back against the ceiling, moving onto the passenger-side visor.

"The keys are inside here somewhere."

Cas frowns. "How do you know?"

"Dean and I used to do this all the time," Sam says, which does not answer the question and does not seem to make much sense anyway. Cas is under no impression that Dean and Sam were and are free of sin when it comes to handling other people's property, but he had believed they hot-wired the cars they were forced to steal. Or at least that is what Dean had told him.

"I don't think -"

Cas's eyes are on the dark windows of the brown house, framed by bright red shutters, when he hears it.

"Sam, stop."

Pausing in the act of searching for whatever it is he is searching for, Sam leans out of the car and peers at Cas curiously. "Everything okay?"

Cas peers into the space between the brown house and the neighboring white one with the peeling paint. There is a small patch of trees beyond their yards, the trees murmuring with the wind. He had heard something that sounded like a bird's chirp, but not. Louder, guttural. The kind of sound the tiny creatures that populate the trees in northern America do not make. He attempts to see if the grasses move without the aid of the wind, but they sway without care for his troubles.

Sam follows his gaze and blinks. "Cas, is there something -"

"No," Cas says, eyes still on the shifting patch of green. "No, I was mistaken."

Sam nods and then turns his attention back to the inside of the car, making a noise of triumph followed by the jingle of metal. "Jackpot. Hop in, Cas. Let's do this in style."

Cas walks around to the passenger door, glancing once more into the trees behind the houses. Finding nothing, he slides into the seat and shuts the door firmly, putting it out of his mind. It is nothing. A simple trick of human hearing. He has seen plenty of films during the early morning hours in which females alone in their houses hear things that are not actually there. Sometimes the films end with the women having sexual relations with the men come to murder them in the night. Those kinds of films are Dean's favorite.

Sam shuts his own door and slips the key into the car's ignition, turning it and grinning at the answering roar. It is quieter than the Impala. Cas finds he misses it. Dean's car is almost an extension of the man himself, loud and beautiful, confident in ways others could never be.

"All right," Sam murmurs, pulling away from the curb and driving easily away, down the street, away from the brown house.

Cas looks into the mirror at his right, unable to take his eyes away from the reflection of what looks to be some kind of large structure, but Sam turns a corner and it is gone.

They do not turn on the radio. Sam says that sometimes it is nice to simply drive in silence, which Dean ruins by blasting his music all the time. The muted rumble of the car's tires against the street is almost soothing, as is the slight tremble that can be felt in the seat against Cas's back. It is relaxing; it makes sense now that Dean does this when he needs time to himself.

Sam continues to turn onto streets as they come upon them, a countless series of rights and lefts onto nameless stretches of road, before odd, oblong shadows crest the horizon. Buildings. They are approaching a city.

"Huh," Sam says, absent enough that Cas knows it is not him who Sam addresses. "I wonder if we were right outside the city all this time."

"What city is this?" Not that it matters. All human cities look and sound the same. Except... they will all look different now. He will need to know the names.

Sam says nothing, opting instead to increase the car's speed. The orange needle slowly brushes past the 60 on the gauge. It is odd Cas finds this speed to be quite fast, as cars have always seemed so sluggish to him.

They enter the city limits without fanfare; they are the only moving automobile on the road. All the other cars are either ensconced in lots or parked alongside the curbs. The streets are empty of all movement.

The car hums as it rolls to a stop. Sam puts it in park, then opens his door to leave the vehicle. "Let's check it out."

Sam shuts the door and begins walking, head tilted back to take in the skyscrapers that hang like paintings in the sky above them. Cas frowns, but also opens his door and gets out, feeling vulnerable. This stolen car does not have the weaponry the Impala carries. He does not like being unarmed, although there has been no indication that weapons are even needed. They have not come across a single person. This feeling of... unease is unfounded. How very odd.

He walks after Sam. "Perhaps we ought to -"

There is movement a few blocks down, but it is too far away to see. It is silhouetted under the green awning of a brick building, a massive shadow swaying from side to side. Sam turns and spots it as well, his broad shoulders going stiff. Whatever is moving grows bigger as it approaches.

"Hey, I know this," Sam says, voice clear, as if waking from a - "Dream. This is a dream. Oh, shit, I know what this is."

There is a curious chirp to their left, exactly like what Cas heard at the brown house, and he spins in surprise to hear it so close by. The leathery face that peers at him is one he has never encountered personally, but he knows it from a museum he once visited while waiting for Dean and Sam to interview a woman about a possession. It had been rendered in plaster and metal pins, as well as captured in a drawing beneath it, while a woman wearing a badge proclaimed with great enthusiasm, _There is still so much we are learning about them!_

He recognizes the giant, arching claws protruding from its toes. He does not recognize the way his stomach seems to bottom out at the very sight.

"Get back to the car," Sam whispers.

The entire world trembles, great booms from a distance that grow louder and more terrifying as they draw nearer.

"Cas, get back to the car," Sam says again, voice wrought with fear like he has never heard from a Winchester, not even when facing the Apocalypse. "_Get back to the car!_"

More chirping and snarling fill the air until it is like the very world is alive with it, buzzing against Cas's skin, the anticipation of the hunt burning him. He is prey in the slitted eyes that regard him with great interest.

Thunder bellows through the street, but it is not thunder. It is an amalgam of elephants trumpeting and tigers roaring, so loud and jarring he can feel it in his teeth, behind his eyes. The ground quakes, forcing buildings to shake off loose bits of plaster and brick. A behemoth emerges from behind a skyscraper and lets loose the sound of horror.

"Jesus _Christ_, run!" Sam barrels by, grabbing Cas by the wrist and pulling him toward the car. It takes a moment for his legs to coordinate themselves and keep pace with Sam, but it takes them little time to reach the vehicle.

The velociraptors scatter at the sight of the Tyrannosaur, giving them the perfect opportunity to open the car doors and get inside. Sam presses a button and the locking mechanism engages just as a velociraptor slams its body into the trunk of the car.

"Fuck!" Sam throws the car into reverse and presses his foot into the accelerator as hard as he can, forcing the creature beneath the vehicle and then underneath it. Cas cannot help but shout in surprise as he is jarred in his seat as they run over it.

Handling the car with shocking ease, Sam spins slightly, puts the gear into forward, and drives quickly away from the gathering of dinosaurs in the heart of the city. Cas, gripping the seat, turns to sit on his knees and watch through the back window as the Tyrannosaur swiftly follows, its feet disturbing the very Earth in its need for a meal. However, it is no match for the speed of the car and begins losing momentum, unable to push its large body any further. Cas watches as it slows down, growing distant behind them, the velociraptors tiny dots next to it.

Panting, he turns and sits properly, head falling back against the rest.

"Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus," Sam gasps, gripping the steering wheel tightly, face white and dotted with sweat. "That seemed a lot less scary when I was ten. Hell, it was _amazing_ when I was ten. Jesus. Oh, God, how did we even - Cas, you okay?"

"I am fine," Cas says, but his voice shakes and is very high in pitch. His right hand grips the small bar above the window, fingers clenching and unclenching rhythmically, and he can't seem to pull it away. "Those were -"

"Dinosaurs," Sam finishes, nodding, trembling hard. "Yep. Those were dinosaurs. Jesus, were those dinosaurs. I went through this phase when I was a kid, right? Big dinosaur phase. Everything had dinosaurs on it. Shirts, backpack, notebooks, you name it. Dean took me to see _Jurassic Park_ when it came out and, man, that was it. I had these shoes, these sneakers? The soles lit up when you walked, right? The backs were the mouth of a T-rex. I thought it was so badass."

A shrill, nervous laugh bursts from his mouth. "Now… less badass?"

Sam starts laughing, hysteria making him rasp. "Yeah, maybe just a little less now. God, I can't even believe that. I haven't had the dinosaur dream in _years_. Forgot how real it felt."

"It felt real because it is real," Cas says. "If we die here, we die. This is our reality. For however long we're here."

He slumps into his seat, suddenly exhausted, stomach cramping from hyperventilation and tension in the muscles. His breathing is still beyond his control.

Sam nudges his knee. "You okay, man? You're coming down off the adrenaline. Just take deep breaths."

"I'm trying."

The road ahead is flanked by buildings he does not recognize and streets without names, all blurring by as they drive. Cas rests his forehead against the glass of the window, closing his eyes to everything outside and reveling in the coolness of the pane.

"So, what," Sam says after a moment of silence. "That's what this is going to be? This whole time?"

"Morpheus will use our dreams against us, yes." Cas opens his eyes. "Our dreams are made up of our greatest fears, desires, and memories. What better way to stop us than to pit us against ourselves?"

Sam frowns, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. "You dream?"

"Yes."

"I didn't think angels slept."

Cas smiles slightly against the window. Despite what Sam knows of angels - which is that they are a bunch of dicks, as Dean is fond of saying - he will never be truly cured of his curiosity. The angel mythos taught to him will never be rooted out for the newer, updated, more depressing version. "They don't."

"But then how do angels dream?"

"They don't."

Sam turns his eyes from the road, confused. "But -"

"Angels don't dream," Cas says. There is a sign on either side of the street, warning that the road is out up ahead.

"But… you do." It is not phrased as a question, even though it clearly is. Cas nods. "Why?"

He does not have an answer that might satisfy Sam, or even himself, because he does not know. He says as much, to which Sam mutters something about a 'special snowflake'.

"I don't understand that ref -"

The impact is on his side, a quick and sudden strike that forces the car from the street and into the air, sending it spinning. Glass bursts like an explosion, ripping and embedding into his skin, opening a million little wounds to the world, but it doesn't register the way slamming bodily into Sam does. He had not belted himself in the way Dean never does and thinks for a moment he will force Dean to do so every time he gets into the Impala from now on.

The vehicle stops its flight by landing upside down, crushing the roof of the car, forcing the metal and fabric and plastic into his belly and chest. He cries out, the surprise fading and awareness creeping in. He can feel the bright, sharp pain in his left leg, probably broken by the angle at which he was thrown into Sam.

Sam. "Sam!" But Sam only groans, a terrible gash at his temple furiously sending blood into his eyes. Sam swipes at them, movement sluggish. At least he is alive.

"Sam, we must -"

The car is struck again, this time from behind, much like the velociraptor did, and the metal of the car crumbles like paper. Cas pulls himself forward just enough to see the road, sprinkled with glass and bits of metal. Beyond the wreckage stands another creature, larger than the velociraptors, stockier, with strong flanks and a domed head. It turns around slowly, tail swinging, and takes stock of the damage.

With a grunt, Sam unfolds himself from his seat and peers out, groaning upon seeing this new foe.

"What is that?"

"From the sequel," Sam mutters, words slurring a bit. "But they got it wrong. Those ones don't use their heads to bash shit. Their necks are curved. Saw a thing about it."

Very faintly, the broken gear stick under his hand quakes as the ground beneath them trembles. His heart pounds with a new wave of adrenaline washing away the exhaustion. He knows that sound.

"Sam, get up. We need to get out of here." He grabs for Sam's wrist and begins tugging, shimmying his body toward the only way out of the wreckage. Beside him, Sam grumbles but starts moving as well, struggling to free himself from a low piece of hanging plastic. The rip of tearing fabric and glass cutting skin mingled with heavy breathing and the sound of thunder growing louder are all that can be heard in the car as they move to free themselves.

Cas is the first to slide out, leg aching with a pain unlike anything he's ever felt, and his eyes immediately go to the dome-headed dinosaur, which seems to have lost interest in them. It is looking away, presumably where the pounding of giant footsteps comes from. After a moment, it cocks its head and then runs away, disappearing behind a building.

"Shit," Sam hisses, hand outstretched. "I'm stuck."

Cas stumbles, his injured leg buckling, but reaches to take Sam's hand in both of his, pulling with everything he has. The muscles in his back strain and his leg screams with agony. Something rips inside the car, audible, and Sam cries out.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Cas leans back, using all of his weight, and Sam slides halfway out of the wreck, enough that he releases Cas's hand and scrambles out the rest of the way, getting to his feet while Cas staggers back.

"Jesus." Sam pushes up against Cas's side and tugs his arm around his shoulders, taking the weight off his injured leg.

"It hurts," Cas says needlessly. "I don't think I can run."

The Tyrannosaur bursts from between two buildings and lets loose a roar that shakes the very world.

"Yeah," Sam says loudly, eyes wide with terror. "You might have to anyway."

They turn and walk-run in the opposite direction as quickly as they can, going around the car and attempting to find a rhythm they can manage together without putting any undue stress on Cas's leg. Behind them, the Tyrannosaur barks out a growl Cas can feel in his chest, and the ground shakes with its steps. He has never felt such bone-chilling fear.

"Go, go, go, go, go, go," Sam urges under his breath, quickening their steps, never once complaining about Cas's clumsy pace, just keeps his eyes straight ahead and moves them along as fast as they can.

Suddenly, Sam stops, and Cas stumbles into his side.

"Sam, what -" Then he sees.

The signs claimed that the road was out. They had been half-right.

The road simply ends. There is nothing beyond it but gray fog. Cas peers down over the edge, but that yields no happy news. It does not matter; it is… such a long way down. His throat closes at the sight, more frightening than ten Tyrannosaurs.

The one behind them is catching up, the street beneath them trembling with its lunging steps, followed by the sounds of the velociraptor pack.

"We'll have to jump," Sam says flatly.

"No."

"Cas -"

"No, no, no," Cas gasps, unable to stop himself from struggling against Sam, who holds him fast by the wrist draped over his shoulder. "No, I can't. I can't jump. There's nothing there. I can't. I'll fall."

He cannot breathe. His lungs heave and constrict, trying and failing to draw in an adequate amount of air, and his body feels light, heavy, too much and too little. He can't jump. How can Sam expect him to jump without anything there to catch him? If he jumps, he will not fly. He will fall. He will fall and fall and fall and fall and there will be nothing, no hand to help him, just worlds upon worlds rising as he plummets through Hell and the First Realm and whatever else Morpheus may have instilled in the universe, through universes, and he will fall and fall and fall -

"CAS!" Sam slaps him with his other hand, then grasps his chin to force Cas to look at him. Sam, with a bleeding head wound and half-dazed eyes. "Cas, we have no choice."

"I'll fall," Cas says inanely, because Sam does not seem to understand. "I'll fall and I'll keep falling -"

"You already Fell," Sam says. "Remember? You already Fell."

He did. He is already Fallen, and yet he still stands.

"Plus," Sam continues, trying to inject some kind of levity into his words. "It's gotta be better than being ripped apart by raptors, right?"

Panting, Cas looks again at the white-gray abyss, and swallows a sob. "All right. All right. You are right."

The Tyrannosaur is nearly upon them, slowing down with great, growling breaths, the raptors at its heels, splitting into a formation that will ensure both he and Sam cannot escape. Clever beasts.

"C'mon," Sam says, eyes on the Tyrannosaur. "We can do this quick."

Cas watches two of the raptors take position at their left, their weaker side due to his injury. The larger of the two lifts its head and makes deep, abrupt calls in its throat, a communication of some sort, perhaps letting the others know their prey has been cornered.

From the corner of his eye, he sees something move, a bright flutter in the air that has him turning. He recognizes it as the thing Gabriel pulled from Dean's throat. One of the raptors eyes it as well and takes a curious snap at it, but it floats instead toward where he and Sam are standing at the edge.

There is a door.

"Sam!" Cas shouts over the blood-curdling roar of the Tyrannosaur, which tosses its head once and then begins charging forward.

Sam turns his head, sees the door. "Go!" He bursts into movement, practically dragging Cas over to where it stands.

Reaching out, Cas fits his palm over the knob, curls his fingers around it just as the Tyrannosaur opens its mouth and -

"… Look, I get what you're saying, but Elton John doesn't count. I'll give you Seger, though. I'm not sure when you even had a chance to listen to any of this stuff, but you could do a whole lot worse than Seger…"

Cas rears back to avoid the tyrannosaur, an automatic response that will prove futile, and the ground rocks slightly with his movement. Panting, he pauses and takes stock of the street, which is gone, replaced by what looks to be a lake. Glancing down, he finds sturdy wood and fiberglass under his feet, and he follows it on an upward curve to where it stops. A boat. He is on a boat.

"What the fuck," Sam says dazedly behind him.

"… and _Night Moves_ is a classic, but… I don't know. Not really _rock_, y'know? I hear the words 'rock' and I don't automatically think Bob Seger or Elton John. Especially not Elton. Jesus Christ, don't listen to Elton."

That voice.

"Fine, Seger's okay, but that's the _line_. As soon as we get back to the car, we're listening to _Smoke on the Water_ on repeat until you understand what true rock is."

He turns slowly and can't stop the half-sob that escapes him.

Dean adjusts the fishing rod in his hand and frowns at him. "What?"


	5. Four

**Four.****  
><strong>**"I walked beside the evening sea and dreamed a dream that could not be; the waves that plunged along the shore said only: 'Dreamer, dream no more!'"**

The sun is warm on his back where it sinks through the heavy material of his coat, the fabric itself unmarked by the glass and new blood spilled in the car accident. In fact, his injured leg is strong beneath him, healthy and without any pain. Unbroken. Cas looks at Sam, who is also free of the wounds he had gained. It is as if their experience with the dinosaurs in the empty city did not happen.

Sam's eyes, however, are locked on the other occupant of the small boat, who reels in his line and frowns at the hook.

"Fucker took my bait," Dean complains, reaching for something on the floor by his feet. It is a small plastic bag filled with what looks to be some kind of sinew. Dean holds his fishing rod between his knees and bends at the waist to cut off a bit of tendon with a compact blade. "Castiel, you been checking your bait?"

Cas's mouth fills with saliva and he swallows it down, dragging in a shuddering breath, watching as Dean takes hold of the fishing hook in one hand and expertly pierces the bait with it, winding the sinew around and over, securing it. The sun glints off the metal of the ring that hugs his thumb and Dean turns his head a little, tossing a little grin at Cas, seemingly unaware of just how the very sight of him has shaken Cas to his core.

He is beautiful, gilded by sunlight and relaxed by the cool air, the rocking of the boat. Cas wants to reach out and touch him but must content himself with watching Dean's chest rise and fall, glad for the soft, nearly silent breaths he takes instead of the punched-out wheeze of the hospital ventilator.

It astounds him, sometimes, just how green Dean's eyes are.

"Dean," Sam says, huffing a disbelieving laugh, smiling wide. "Oh, my god, Dean."

"I told you," Dean says, gesturing at Cas. "You gotta check your bait every so often. Reel it in, let's see."

There is a rod in Cas's hands.

Sam looks at him, startled and a bit hurt, then waves a hand at Dean. "Dean. _Dean_."

But Dean does not hear him, or see him. It is evident in the way he does not react to Sam at all, not even a twitch or breath. Sam stares, nonplussed, and shakes his head as if he cannot comprehend an instance in which Sam would be a non-entity to his brother.

"I don't understand," Sam says faintly. "Why can't he see me?"

"My guess is," Cas begins, finding subtle beauty in the way Dean's T-shirt pulls tight across his shoulders, "because it is my dream."

Sam scoffs. "You were in mine. You were chased, you were… you were right there with me. They saw you!"

Cas looks down at the rod in his hands, very hesitantly closes his hand around the handle of the reel, and begins turning it. Next to him, Dean hums his approval and casts his own line out into the water. "When you were a child and first had the dream, were you alone against the dinosaurs?"

"No, I had -" Sam stops suddenly, realization dawning, and his eyes flick to where Dean is humming something under his breath and slightly jerking his fishing rod.

Cas nods and reaches up for the hook as it lifts from the water and swings around. There is no bait on it. "I imagine I filled the role in the dream meant for your brother."

There is no role for Sam to fill here. Cas has had this particular dream perhaps twice; it is simply himself and Dean on a boat under an autumn sun, discussing music and fishing. Cas will manage to hook a large-mouth bass and Dean will jokingly accuse him of using his powers to do so.

"Aw, were you paying any attention at all? Dude, c'mon. I told you. When you cast out, keep feeding your line until it hits the bottom. That'll get the fish curious. Soon as you feel a tug, you jerk hard to hook it and then start reeling it in." Dean comes over, arm brushing against Cas as he baits his hook. "All right. Now cast it like I showed you."

Hands cover his and guide the rod up, then back slightly. Dean's mouth brushes his cheekbone - accidental, even in his dream - as he says, "Okay, now release the bail arm." One of Dean's hands lifts to click the hinged metal into place and then returns to its place atop Cas's knuckles. "Ready?"

His heart is pounding. Surely Dean can feel it against his arm where it presses against his chest.

"So, uh, I get this is all subconscious," Sam says slowly, trailing off as though he is going to finish the sentence, but does not. Not that he needs to. Cas can hear all sorts of implications in his tone.

"All right," Dean says, and there is a smile in his voice. "Now, let it go!"

The baited hook sails some distance away from the boat, and Dean keeps feeding the line until he makes a satisfied sound, locks the bail arm, and steps away. Cas shivers at the rush of cool air that washes over him in Dean's absence. His heart is still thudding in his chest, beating _deandeandeandean_ against his ribs.

Carefully, Dean makes his way back to where his own rod sits patiently. "Don't forget to jerk it along the bottom."

They watch as Dean picks up his rod and jerks it in example, glancing over his shoulder to grin brightly at Cas. After a moment, Sam speaks. "Do you…?"

A reluctant smile tugs at Cas's lips and he places his rod in a small, metal hold. Dean casts around for something in the boat, eyes lighting when he finds an unopened bottle of beer sitting on the floor.

"I always suspected there was… something. I mean, no one stares at another person _that_ much without there being… something," Sam says, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. "And you pulled him out of Hell. Rebelled against Heaven for him. Died for him. There had to be something."

Cas tilts his head up to catch Sam's gaze. "There has always been 'something', as you say. For me. From the moment I first felt the brush of his soul in the Pit. I have found there is nothing I would not do for your brother, and as I have not spent very long in the company of humans, I suspect I have not made it a secret. Not that I would, if I knew how to hide it. I have given him everything there is of me; obeying societal norms at this point seems… superfluous."

Dean shouts wordlessly, dropping his beer and reeling his line in madly, but there is nothing on his hook. "Again? Seriously? Jesus fucking Christ."

"He has no idea, does he?"

Cas turns his head to gaze out onto the lake. The trees seem to be aflame in brilliant golds, reds, and oranges, encircling them like holy fire. It truly is a place born of a dream. "As I said, I have not made it a secret, and as he has said nothing about it - and he has much to say about everything - I believe I have my answer."

Sam snorts. "Cas, I love my brother to a degree that is truly stupid, so believe me when I say Dean has the observational powers of a brick. I don't think he's rejected your, uh, something. It's probably more like he just doesn't get it. He's a little slow on the uptake sometimes. Needs things spelled out. When we're out of here and we have a little time to ourselves? You should talk to him. Speak slowly, use little words. I think you'd leave that conversation pretty satisfied."

He blinks, looking back up. "Sam?"

He's rewarded with a cavalier shrug. "Like I said, no one stares at someone else _that_ much without there being something."

Dean grumbles something under his breath, baiting his hook and casting it out again. "This might be a bust, Castiel. I'm about two seconds away from having you _mojo_ me up a fish just so I can hook it and feel better about myself."

Sam bumps his shoulder lightly, a peculiar expression on his face. "He calls you Castiel."

"It's my name," he says.

"Yeah, but Dean doesn't call you Castiel. Not in real life."

"Dean has christened me with another name," Cas agrees, "but here… in my dreams, he calls me by my given name."

They fall into a comfortable silence, content to watch Dean mutter and glare at his fishing rod as if it is responsible for his lack of fish. He takes out his cell phone from his pocket, reads whatever is on the screen, and announces that Sam will meet them later for dinner. The sun has softened everything, somehow bleached it into a faded photograph, perfect in every way but the obvious.

Sam clears his throat, coughs once, and swallows. "This is… well."

"What?"

"Boring. This is really boring. You have all this power, all this imagination, and you're sitting in a boat with my brother, who's buzzed on cheap beer and sending me texts."

"Forgive me for the lack of velociraptors."

"No, no," Sam says on a laugh. "It's… nice. And believe me, we've had too little of that in our lives."

The tip of Cas's rod bends suddenly and Dean lets out a joyful whoop, flailing the arm not attached to the hand holding a beer. "You got a bite! Reel it in, reel it in!"

Cas moves away from Sam to take hold of the rod, hand on the handle and turning it quickly. The plastic is large and awkward against his palm, but he tries his best anyway. Dean comes up next to him and places his hands over Cas's, helping him to reel it in the correct way. Dip the rod, pull it back, reel. Dip the rod, pull it back, reel. Over and over until there is a flash of something in the water, graceful and sinuous and reflecting the sunlight.

"Man, that's a nice one," Dean whistles in his ear, hands still covering his. "It's gotta be at least twenty inches. You totally used your Jedi powers to snag this thing."

"I did not," Cas protests, dipping the road, pulling it back, and reeling. Slowly, the line lifts from the water, bringing with it a -

"Shit," Sam hissed, tripping in his haste to get close for a look. "What _are_ these things?"

Dean grabs the line a few inches from the hook and positively beams at Cas. "Good going, Castiel! Definitely a keeper."

The ball of light bats its wings, jerking against the metal hook that has somehow managed to penetrate it. It buzzes faintly like television snow in a thousand motel rooms late at night, louder when Cas reaches for it, dislodging it from the hook and holding it tightly in his hand. It is strangely solid despite being made of light, and hums against his fingers, pure energy, almost like Grace in a way.

"Think it's spying on us?"

Cas shakes his head. "I don't know… what its purpose is."

"You gonna name it or something?" Dean snorts, nudging Cas with an elbow. "C'mon, let's throw it on ice. They have those grills in the picnic area - I'll call Sam and have him meet us. We'll cook this baby up real nice."

Sam reaches over Cas's shoulder and plucks the thing from his hand. He brings it close to his face, peering at it curiously. Then he shakes it a bit. "Hey. You listening, Morpheus? Cute trick, dragging out the dinosaur dream, but that was nothing. We can take whatever you dish out. We're coming for you. We're coming for Dean. So you'd better be ready, because when we find you? We're gonna tear you apart."

Cas swallows. "Sam."

The wings beat once against Sam's fingers, then stop. The humming and buzzing ceases, and it seems to hold as still as it can before collapsing into itself, disappearing with a soft whisper.

Sam purses his lips and stares down at his empty hand. "So, we'll probably end up regretting that."

"Hey, I'm texting Sam again," Dean says, already thumbing the keys on his phone, sitting down on one of the two wooden benches. "Looks like a storm's coming in. We'll introduce you to the finer points of grilled food another day."

This is not part of the dream.

Spilling from the ledge of the horizon and over the lake are black clouds, churning like smoke with the promise of something sinister, casting shadows and effectively putting out the flame of the trees. The wind picks up and turns the air from comfortable to frigid. It is not a weather pattern like Cas has ever seen.

"Unless, you know, you want to stay."

Cas's breath catches in his throat.

Dean smiles up at him with too-brilliant green eyes, lowering the phone. "We could stay here as long as you want."

"Cas," Sam says loudly, pointing at the growing clouds, which are now flashing with light. "That's not lightning."

Sam is right. Above them, the skies open and hundreds of balls of light drift down like snow, their wings outstretched to soften their descent. They dissipate upon hitting the water but pile up at their feet, rolling around the bottom of the boat. Sam begins grabbing handfuls of them and tossing them over the side of the boat into the water.

"Cas!" The boat rocks as the wind blows large waves across the surface of the lake, and Sam barely manages to avoid falling overboard. "Cas, we need to get off the lake."

Dean just looks up at the sky, seemingly unmoved by the commotion, and pockets his phone. Cas pushes past him to reach for one of the oars half-buried under a pile of light and wings, but is suddenly knocked off his feet and over the side.

He hears Sam's shout as his back hits the water, but whatever Sam says is lost as his trench coat soaks up as much as it can take, dragging him down. He thrashes, tries to shimmy out of the coat, but it's too clingy, too heavy, billowing around as if it wants to swaddle him. The surface of the lake is a faint shimmer that reflects the rain of those light-creatures, and he can just make out the dark outline of the boat.

His lungs protest loudly, demanding to be allowed to exhale, but he cannot breathe in the water. Humans die if they breathe in water. Humans die if they do not breathe, if they do not know how to swim. There is not a way out of this he can find.

Dizzily, he turns his back to the surface and gasps in surprise at the solid, familiar form of a door fixed in the water as if it were natural to be there, water rushing in to fill his lungs. His body begins dropping past it, below it, and he reaches up to grab the very edge of it, but misses.

It is so cold down here, so far beyond the reach of the sun, it feels like how ice must: sharp and painful, without hope for any kind of reprieve. He has not yet had the opportunity to feel cold the way a human does, but dimly he thinks of cutting through swathes of Hell in search of Dean and flying through a part so deep, so dark, that it was the opposite of the Fire. It was cold, or some parody of it, but only served to make him fly faster, fight harder, because somewhere there was a soul torturing and being tortured that needed to be lifted from Perdition. This cold makes him want to sleep, possibly forever, because he is too heavy to do anything else.

He closes his eyes, suddenly comfortable and just so tired, and drifts.

A hand suddenly curls around his wrist, pulling him painfully up, cutting through the ice that has coated his insides. His eyes slide open, stinging in the frigid water, and Sam frowns at him with puffed out cheeks.

Holding onto his wrist, Sam drags him up to the door. Despite the clouds darkening his vision, he sees the large hand close over the knob, turning, and he hits carpeted floor, landing hard on his side and shocking his system so suddenly that the impact expels the water still sloshing in his lungs. He rolls over onto his stomach and pushes up with his hands, holding himself up as he coughs and coughs, dislodging the lake and the false storm. It burns all the way up and he watches it soak into the tessellation pattern of the carpet.

A hand rubs his back. "That's it. Get it all out."

He coughs twice more, throat raw, then sits back against Sam's legs. "That was… unpleasant."

Sam snorts. "I don't think anyone's ever thrown up and been, like, 'yay!'"

Cas sucks in a breath, reveling in the way the cool pull of air briefly sooths his throat, and looks around. They are back in the hallway of doors. Which door they even came through, he does not know. They are all closed, identical, and refuse to give answers. He does not know what happened to Dean, if he is still on the boat and trapped on stormy water, or if the tempest simply ceased when they left and Dean finishes out the dream as if Cas were still there.

He closes his eyes and sighs, tipping his head back and resting it against Sam's knees. "I would apologize for the abrupt change in my dream, but I'm very certain it was your fault."

"I'll take the blame," Sam says easily, although his voice is hard. When Cas opens his eyes, he sees the firm jut of Sam's chin as Sam takes stock of the doors. "I'm almost afraid to open another one. God knows what he'll drag out next."

Cas exhales and allows Sam to help him to his feet, dizzy and unsteady, his lungs feeling as though they still hold a lake in them. He glances to where the wall breaks and then moves to the railing, peering down and counting the floors. Or the single floor. It is all connected. "What if we walked all the way down?"

Sam stares down as well. "Does it end?"

"I don't know."

By unspoken agreement, they walk down the incline of the hallway, Cas's steps still a bit unsteady, whereas Sam's are strong and confident. It sometimes amazes him how the Winchesters can be hit with responsibilities that border on absurd and simply take it in stride. He hopes he will someday be able to "roll with the punches", that things will bounce off him as he walks through them without fear or doubt.

They continue their descent, Sam running his fingertips over the wall and doors like he did in the beginning, the sound of his skin against plaster and glossy wood the only sound. Their footsteps are tempered by the carpet, soft and plush beneath them.

"How much time do you think's passed up there?" Sam suddenly asks, not looking at him, not looking anywhere except forward.

"I… don't know. I can't imagine much," Cas says. "I read in a google that the dream cycle is very short, even if a dream seems long. Twenty minutes at the most. If we were to believe that, perhaps… an hour?"

Sam is chuckling.

"What?"

"You said 'a google'. That's not - it was an article or something that you read. You Googled an article about the dream cycle." Sam grins. "Google is the search engine you used."

He frowns, frustration welling up inside him, and his feet slow their pace until he comes to a stop. "What does it matter? You knew what I meant."

Sam looks over his shoulder at him and stops. "Cas, it's not a big deal. I was just -"

"You and Dean do this. Correct me, even when you know exactly what I am talking about. You both take great pleasure in it, my… lack of understanding. I know I am uneducated in all the ways that count. I do not need or appreciate the reminder, Sam. Not now." He swallows the anger that clogs his throat. "There will be plenty of time to revel in the fact that I am not like you, and I would like you to keep all your comments about it to yourself until then."

Sam stares, mouth moving soundlessly, and suddenly Cas is ashamed of his outburst. Somewhere in this place, perhaps behind the door they stand in front of, Dean is waiting for a rescue. He does not know what Morpheus is doing, if he is torturing him, breaking him and readying him against them, but nothing will be achieved if Cas takes offense to every thrown-away comment.

"I - I apologize, Sam -"

"No," Sam says faintly, as if he cannot believe that Cas would ever rebuke him. "I… You're right. It's shitty. I didn't mean for it to sound like I was… rubbing your face in it. I'm sorry."

The words that had risen in anger die a quick death on his tongue, and Cas looks down at his shoes. They are scuffed, even more so now than when Jimmy had worn them, and it makes Cas think of all he has been through since coming to Earth and finding the soft soles of his vessel's feet needed to be protected. The physical battles alone were enough to wear them out, but simply walking beside Dean and Sam, scraping them against pavement and Bobby's dusty front yard, has also taken its toll.

That he even wears shoes, that he needs to now, says so much. He is human. He does not want to be angry with Sam. Sam is his friend.

"Sam, I'm sorry."

"Let's keep walking," Sam suggests, and there is nothing in his tone to suggest he is upset with Cas. There is lingering guilt and remorse, but little else. It is astonishing how humans say so much with so few words. The Winchesters sometimes say nothing and the silence speaks volumes, entire conversations all punctuated with forgiveness and familial love.

"Yes," Cas agrees, and relaxes at the answering half-smile. He will get better at not being an angel. He can adapt. And when they have returned Dean to the right reality, he will ask what is the right way to use the 'search engine' called Google.

They walk in a silence that rides just the edge of comfortable, Sam too afraid to say something that may be construed as offensive, and Cas worried of trying to hold on to something no longer his. He steps on the carpet and cannot trace the origins of the fibers decades back, know to whom all the fingers which handled them belonged, feel the very planet tilt under his feet. It is simply a carpet meant to soften impact to the feet and look nice.

He is so lost in his thoughts about what carpeting means to a human that he nearly misses the naked man that staggers into view.

"Cas." Sam reaches out and stops him from continuing with a hand. He peers distrustfully at the unsteady gait, the protruding rib cage, the sallow skin and dead eyes. The man does not even acknowledge them with a glance in their direction; his empty gaze is fixed on some point beyond them, and Cas does not need to turn around to know there is nothing there. "Excuse us."

The man stops suddenly and sways hard enough that it looks as though he will fall over with his next breath. He does not look at them, but there is something about the way he holds his body that suggests they have his attention.

Sam exchanges a glance with Cas, communicating his confusion and wariness. Cas pities the poor man; if he had his Grace, he would have put him out of his very obvious misery.

"You okay, buddy?"

The man opens his mouth and a string of words Sam clearly does not understand ekes out, and Cas swallows at the hollow, somewhat sad creature that stands unsteadily before them.

"Jesus," Sam whispers, eyes wide. "What the hell did he just say?"

The man spoke Slavic. Dialect from the West.

_"I think I am lost."_

Iris had mentioned something about a human or two - a person, he reminds himself, a person just like you - who stumbled into Demos Oneiroi and were trapped, doomed to wander the "First Realm" until Morpheus deemed their sentence complete. Cas had a sinking feeling it would never finish for these poor souls.

"Come, Sam, let us continue," Cas says quietly, eyes still on the man who does not look at them.

Sam shakes his head. "No, we can't just _leave_ him like this! Look at him!"

The man's head tilts.

"His troubles are not ours to worry about right now. We must find -"

_"Is there a way out? I believe I have passed the exit."_

Cas's heart aches for this man, who could have been wandering these halls for decades upon decades, who was perhaps someone's father, brother, husband, lover, friend. But he is none of these things to Cas and Sam. Right now, he is a means to an end. _"Where is Morpheus?"_

The man blinks and slowly, agonizingly, lifts his head to meet Cas's gaze. What Cas finds there he cannot - and will never - describe.

"Cas, you speak… is that Russian? You speak Russian?"

"I speak all languages. I lack my Grace, not my knowledge." To the man, he says, _"Morpheus. Where is the ruler of Demos Oneiroi?"_

A smile breaks over the man's face, revealing crooked teeth. _"Marowit is everywhere."_

In a sudden, jaunty burst of motion, the man starts sauntering toward them, eyes dark and wild, his very visible hipbones doing an oddly mechanical twist. Sam immediately drops into a defensive position, arm out and bent into a sort of buffer, ready to throw the man back should there be an attack. But the man does not run for them. He instead opts for the door nearest Cas.

_"One little angel all dressed in blue,__  
><em>_Trying to figure out where his lover got to__  
><em>_But the ground rose up, from which two were born__  
><em>_One was made of ivory, the other made of -"_

The man opens it, and disappears into whatever dream awaits, the door slamming shut on the last word of the rhyme.

Sam's shoulders slump and he stares at the door. "The hell was that about?"

_Marowit is everywhere._ Such an old name, nearly forgotten, but makes a terrible amount of sense now. The man has been here for such a very long time.

"We are not safe here," Cas murmurs, eyeing the door. "Not anywhere."

"What did that guy say? He was… kind of not all there, if you get my meaning."

Sam has always been the more tactful of the Winchester brothers. Dean would have said the man was "batshit crazy". Cas can appreciate tact, but he feels the absence of Dean's incredulity as he would a missing limb.

What is he supposed to say to Sam now? That the man who just disappeared into a dream spoke a language that was assimilated into the Germanic tribes centuries ago, that he has been trapped here for so long he still believes in a Wendish god? That this sorry attempt at a rescue will either result in their deaths or their own entrapment in this hallway of doors? Iris had warned them, had said bluntly they would fail, but Cas refused to believe it was possible. Seeing that man, seeing how centuries of dreaming had warped him into a vacant, mindless thing.

And Dean is in Morpheus's very grasp.

"He said nothing we don't already know," Cas says after a moment, and wonders where the other humans are who have been held in this realm. If they encounter them, what terrible, unhappy endings to this story will he glean from them?

"I don't know what we'll find down there if we keep going," Sam says. "Maybe we should walk back up a ways and pick a door?"

Something moves in the shadows, down where the hallway curves into another floor, and for a moment he fears it will be another winged node come to mock them. But the light of the hallway glints off a silver ring that sits snug on a thumb, off a horned pendant, and Cas is moving before he even registers Sam shouting his name.

He runs and runs, the tail-end of a worn green jacket the only thing visible before it finally disappears into shadow, gone from sight, gone as though it was never there to begin with.

"Cas!" Sam pulls him back by the shoulder, swinging him around and holding him firm.

"Did you see him?"

Sam stops and squints into the darkness, shaking his head. "No, I - see who?"

"Dean," Cas says frantically, struggling in Sam's grasp. Every moment they stand here talking puts more and more distance between him and Dean. Surely Sam can understand the urgency. "I saw Dean. It was him, Sam. He had the amulet."

Sam stares at him with something like sorrow, but not once does a flicker of hope enter his eyes. "Cas… _you_ have his amulet, remember?"

The brass is heavy where it hangs over his pounding heart, and he slowly lifts a hand, curling his fingers around it. The points of the horns bite into his palm.

Ghosts. He is chasing ghosts.

He closes his eyes. The world seems to close in on him from all sides, crushing him between the emotions firing all at once throughout his entire being and the crushing reality that this is a fool's errand. How could it have come to this? Why have they been fighting for so long, when all Morpheus could have done was dream an end to Lucifer? What does taking Dean away from the fight - away from them - serve?

The array of human emotions is a frightening paradox, in which one can identify the feeling that plagues them, and take proper measures to amplify the good and cure the bad, but does the exact opposite. Cas feels rage and hopelessness, has labeled them as such, and can now take the steps to make them stop. But he does not. Instead, they fill him up and cloud his mind, growing murky and thick until he is practically choking on them. How do people live like this? How is it possible for him to feel _so much_?

But he packs it all away on an inhale, and once he has exhaled completely he is ready to continue. This moment of misery, of utter futility, is all he will allow himself. It is all he can spare.

"Let's go," he says quietly, firmly, the gnawing animal called despair locked in a cage from which it will never escape.

"Cas."

He shakes his head, releasing the amulet. It will not burn here. It is tethered to a false god. "Pick a door, Sam. Pick any door. I do not care if we must enter _all_ of them - we will find Dean. Even if we must drag ourselves through a thousand nightmares, I will not stop until I _drag_ him out."

Sam stares as if he doesn't recognize him. As he shouldn't. Sam has only known Castiel the angel, or Cas the angel. He has never known Cas the human like this. But he must like - or at least recognize - what he finds on Cas's face, because Sam squares his shoulders and nods once, decisively.

"This is all based on random chance," Sam glances over the doors with obvious distrust.

Cas nods and keeps hold of the cage door when despair rises to snap at the bars. "Dreams _are_ random. We have no choice. One of these doors will -"

Sam lifts a hand to silence him, eyes fixed over Cas's shoulder, and Cas feels something jerk hard in his chest at the expression he finds on Sam's face. It is the same expression, that immediate reaction of rage and fear and distrust Sam wore upon first finding Castiel in Dean's motel room.

He turns and inhales sharply.

The dark wood three doors down the hall from them glows an intensely bright white, standing firm as a node of light lolls against it, its wings whispering over the grain like a promise. A need to name it, to label it as something that he can quantify, rises up inside him, an entirely human reaction to the unknown. Dean and Sam both do it, even if they know what it is. Naming is authority. He wants to name whatever these creatures are, shift the balance of power from Morpheus to him.

"Looks like an invitation," Sam says quietly behind him and Castiel nods.

"It does," he agrees. "And we would not want to be rude."


	6. Five

**Five.****  
><strong>**"Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask."**

They found him waiting for Dean on the edge of a piece of paper given in a dream, and tore him from his vessel. He is not sure how they got to him so quickly; he had warded the abandoned warehouse with every sigil he could think of, every symbol, every name he knew, and it still could not hold against the fury of the Host. The moment he heard the Song explode across the backs of his vessel's eyes, he knew it would only be a matter of time before they - some garrison of Virtues or perhaps even Principalities - would tear down the walls brick by brick. He shed a lot of Jimmy Novak's blood in the service of a banishing sigil, but he hadn't had the opportunity to use it by the time they reached him.

He killed one of his brothers. Juniel. The echo of shock and horror rang like a gunshot from Dean's gun in the hush of the night, and he had been so surprised, so sickened by his actions that he stopped. Allowed them to take him back.

And here he stands, alone before the Consultation, tiers upon tiers of judges, eyes and flame and wrath, all fixed upon him, a loyal soldier turned traitor for a pair of humans who will never know what their roles are in all this.

Dean will meet him where he asked, but will find nothing glad to greet him. No answers, no truths, no absolution.

"As further punishment for your betrayal, you are restricted from the Song until We believe you deserve to hear It."

Castiel closes his eyes and shudders, swallowing down a sob. He has heard of only a few angels who were severed from the Song, and none of them recovered. Madness descends because it is the only way to fill the silence. It could be worse. Somehow, in some twisted way, it could be much worse. This mercy bestowed upon him by the Host is to be taken as a lesson in humility and divine compassion.

"Do you have words for Us, Castiel?"

He does. He has many words, so many. The words are angry, scared, calling out for a Father who will not hear them because they are simply not enough. He wants to shout at each and every one of his brothers and sisters, to somehow show them what he sees when he looks at Humanity. Works of art, all of them. Exquisite, stunning, and all one of a kind. They are all of them diverse in body and in mind, and they are all glorious. The Father made humans to be protected by His first children. Bringing down the Apocalypse goes directly against their purpose.

And to ask - no, demand - that two human men, both marked by time and trauma, carrying the weight of several worlds upon their shoulders, to add more to their already heavy burden is too unfair. The Father would weep if He knew Dean and Sam were to fill these roles. The vessels for Mikael and Lucis Ferre were not of His design. All of this is wrong. He does not say this because the Host can hear it as if he did, rippling in outrage.

"Who is it you serve?"

Dean once sat on a park bench in a saved town and told him everything around them is what matters. He was right. _That_ is the right path.

"I serve my Father," is what he says.

"Re-Education begins immediately and will end when We feel you will carry out the orders given to you. You are forthwith stripped of your position on Earth until such time. All responsibilities will be assumed by Zachriel during the course of the Re-education process. This is mercy, Castiel. This is an extension of your Father's love. We cannot recall another to receive a boon such as this. It is a blessing."

They are going to erase him. They will scrub clean everything he has learned, every thought, every doubt, every dream, until he is empty and there only to be filled with the Word. They will remove color, music, light, and remake him into the hammer he has never wanted to be.

"Thank you," he says, and wants to weep.

"Cas!"

"You are to be taken to the Ninth Choir -" It is a blessing, for no angel below the rank of Seraph has ever been there. "- and the process shall commence immediately."

"Cas, snap out of it! It's a dream!"

He turns and there, among the tiers, is a human man. Not just any man. He knows this one.

"Cas!"

Sam.

He turns back to his judges, shocked, but they do not pay heed to the human intruder who would surely meet a swift and untimely death, or would be taken and delivered promptly to the outer reaches of Lucifer's cage. A gift to appease the Fallen child, or perhaps an invitation to bring about the End.

This is a dream.

No, not a dream. A memory. This is his memory. He has lived through this once already, snatched away from Jimmy, who will be reunited with his wife and daughter, who will accept what will amount to a prison sentence in order to spare his progeny.

There are four of his brothers on either side of him now, leading him away from the tiers, tight against him as if they fear further rebellion, and they take him through a maze he cannot remember ever being in Heaven. There are no walls. There are no tiers. There is nothing physical about the Kingdom, not in the sense he is experiencing. This is Heaven and yet this is not. Sam follows close behind, keeping a short distance between himself and the escorts, saying nothing, just walking quietly around a dozen corners, all hard angle and violently lit chrome walls. Everything shines like the sleek appliances Castiel has seen on infomercials (he still does not understand the colloquialism), torn straight from the kinds of films that hold Dean's attention for hours, even though he tears apart the logic of it, the impossibility of robots, of space travel, and Cas wants to tell him that human progress - if left alone - will someday stretch to the stars. However, Dean does not trust him, and very soon he will have good reason.

No. No, this is a dream. A memory. This has already happened. Lucifer has been released from the Cage, but it is all for naught, because God is not God and Morpheus is more than a myth. Dean is not watching any film or infomercial, but is tucked somewhere in the heart of the dream realm, waiting for him and Sam to save him from whatever horrors Morpheus is inflicting. If Cas is in an unpleasant memory from his own past, then there is nothing to stop Morpheus from locking Dean in a memory of Hell.

He swallows and reaches automatically out to run his fingers across the too-smooth surface of the maze wall, then jerks his hand back. His hand. _His hand_. His true self does not have hands. His true self holds no particular shape, nothing more than a curve of celestial intent, but he still holds Jimmy Novak's visage. His visage. Jimmy Novak is no more, and neither is Castiel. He is Cas and this is his body. But why does he have it in a memory when there should be no form at all?

His four escorts - Hadriel, Sariel, Maruel, and Gandriel - come to a stop in front of a section of the wall, crowding around him, waiting for him to do something that will require them to use physical force. They, too, are in vessels. This should not be. Mortal eyes - even eyes used by an angel - could never withstand the awesome power of Heaven.

He knows what will happen. His escorts - brothers and sisters he has been made aware of in other garrisons but has not met personally until now - will leave him in this cell and two of them will not return to see him. Maruel will escort him to and from his meetings with Haniel, who has been assigned the dubious honor of seeing to his Re-Education.

A panel in the wall lifts like those he has seen in Dean's futuristic movies, and he is shoved in by Sariel's dainty hand, holding more power in her palm than the vessel she inhabits ever could. Sam slips by her easily and into the cell, but they do not see him.

"I will return," Maruel says stiffly, and all four turn away, leaving back down the hall as the door slides closed and the cracks seal up, leaving him and Sam trapped.

Sam exhales loudly. "What the fuck is all this, Cas? What's going on?"

The cell is very small and very bright. Too bright. It hurts his eyes to look at the walls for too long and he closes them tightly, expelling the light that still lingers. This is not meant to be a comfortable place. When Haniel is done with him - and he really has no desire to relive his Re-Education - he will be brought back here to suffer some more. Using this cell as a manner of respite after he is brought back from Haniel will prove pointless.

"Cas?"

He startles, stumbling back a step. Sam is here. How can Sam be here? Has he been taken as well in an attempt to separate him from Dean? Will his brothers and sisters try to coerce Sam into playing the role the angels have created for him? Dean will not care for Castiel's absence, but he will certainly notice Sam's. Bringing Sam here is folly; Dean will never cooperate now.

"Sam," he says, taking stock of the tall body, the clothes that are untouched. There is no blood, no obvious wounds. The angels have not harmed him.

Not "the angels". His brethren. He thinks in terms as though he were not one of them.

But he is not. He is human now. He is in Demos Oneiroi, and this is a memory.

He brings a hand to his temple and squeezes his eyes shut. "I am… My mind is muddled, Sam. I believe this to be real when I know it is not. This is different from the dreams before."

Sam has an expression on his face that normally preludes a comment suspicious in nature. "How is it -"

"It is not a dream," he says. "It is a memory. This has happened."

Sam licks his lips, a nervous tic, then moves to one of the walls, running his hand over it, searching for a weakness in the design the way Castiel has seen the Winchesters search for hex bags and information in tomes that should not be in human hands, yet have somehow found their way into Bobby Singer's library. He backs away from it, finding nothing. Even in this false, physical form, Heaven would show no flaw.

"Sam," Cas says urgently, drawing Sam's attention away from the wall. He must speak quickly before Maruel returns. "They will come for me to begin my Re-Education. You will have to stay here until I am brought back."

"Fuck that!" Sam shouts, slicing the air with his arm for emphasis. "What's this 'Re-Education' thing? When is this?"

"When you found Jimmy Novak in that warehouse."

"Shit," Sam gasps, eyes wide. Cas can see the realization dawn. "This is where you were. This is why you turned into a dick again. When you say Re-Education -"

Cas nods. "They broke me of my ties to Dean. And to you. To my empathy for Humanity. Little time passed on Earth, but I was here for twenty years."

Sam closes his eyes against the words, then shakes his head. "Fuck. I'm sorry, Cas, but we don't have twenty years this time."

"I do not want to be here for twenty years," he says wryly, agreeing, touched by Sam's obvious sympathy and sorrow on his behalf. "Once was enough. But I don't think Morpheus will be kind enough to cut the time short -"

"But there will be a door," Sam breaks in suddenly, eyes shining with a preemptive victory. "There's gonna be a door somewhere. We just gotta find it and then we can get the hell out of here. You won't have to relive anything."

So clever. There are two of them in this memory now, and they do not have to be in the same place at the same time.

"When I am with Haniel -"

"No," Sam says. "No, I'm not leaving you to go through that alone."

And so unfailingly loyal. "Sam, if you stay with me all the time, you will never find the opportunity to look for the door. You have to do this without me."

The wall behind them opens and Maruel steps in, fitting the hulking body of her vessel into the room. It is a large man with a shaved head and many tattoos that she wears. She frowns at him. "I am to take you to Haniel."

A sharp, jagged shard of fear lodges in Castiel's throat and it takes a moment to swallow it down. He remembers his first visit with Haniel.

"Of course," he says and steps forward, but looks back over his shoulder at Sam, who watches them leave, stricken. "The door."

It takes half a moment for Sam to understand and he nods firmly, spurred into movement.

"What about the door?" Maruel asks stonily.

Cas steps out of the room and offers no explanation, although he doubts Maruel was expecting one. Behind them, Sam slips out of the room before the panel in the wall slides down and seals. Luckily, he does not stay to ask questions or follow them; he gives Cas a dubious smile, turns, and runs down the hall, disappearing around a corner.

He watches him go and quells the desperate urge to call Sam back when Maruel starts in the opposite direction, clearly expecting him to follow. He poses no threat to Maruel, or any of his brothers and sisters here. If he attempted any kind of attack, he would be struck down a thousand times in a thousand ways.

The hallway twists like the garden mazes he has seen on Earth, a labyrinth of white and that utterly blinding light that makes everything seem blue. Shadows play odd tricks with his vessel's eyes as they move silently and swiftly, their footfalls soft.

He does not know how long and how complicated the maze is, or how long it will take Sam to locate the door. Heaven's design is not something easily understood, not even by his brethren. It is not meant for them to know. But then, this is not Heaven's design. This has been wrought by another's hand. But who could ever hope to shape anything in the Kingdom that is not the Father?

It is shocking to entertain these thoughts, but he thinks of Dean and Sam, fighting so hard on Earth, fighting the wrong enemy, believing Lilith's death will stave off Lucifer's rising. Even now that he has been caught, on his way to Haniel, he thinks of the slip of paper he gave Dean on a lakeside dock, and wishes he had succeeded in what he planned to do. It would have been worth it.

"Ah, _there_ he is!" Cas manages to suppress a shudder at the cheerful voice that resounds through the maze. He hears something scrape something else very loudly, as if punctuating the words, and it sounds like metal upon metal. The muscles in his vessel's back draw up tight, his wings tensing from where he has them hidden out of habit. He had forgotten how they balanced him.

No, impossible. That is incorrect. How could he have forgotten his wings?

Maruel brings him into a room that makes him stop, close his eyes and swallow the fear before he can look again. He knows this room, that table, this scene. Alistair was strapped to such a table, the metal dirty and out of place in such a clean, stark room. In place of the Devil's Trap, there are sigils, sigils meant only for angels, sigils meant for hurting. For pain. For Re-Education.

Re-Education is a lovelier word than torture. By calling it Re-Education, Heaven can somehow separate itself and its machinations from those of Hell. It would not do to be compared to that disgusting, writhing, seething pit of blood and horror and loss, especially when Heaven is exactly the opposite. A beautiful, still, quiet pit of blood and horror and loss.

What are these _thoughts_? The Host can hear him. The Host can hear all of this, and yet he cannot stop.

"Thank you, Maruel," Haniel says lightly from where he stands at a counter, back to them, focused on the metal tools he is inspecting and choosing with such care. He lifts a large blade with a serrated edge and it glows blue in the light.

Maruel brings Castiel over to the table and he acts fast, using his very physical form to rear his elbow back into Maruel's nose, the bone caving in with a satisfying crunch, and he pivots on the ball of his foot to bring her down with a punch. But there is a firm hand between his shoulder blades that forces him onto the table with a hard thud. His arms are pulled away from his body, stretched until he feels the muscles straining in the Teres Major, and strapped down. His legs, similarly, are parted and restrained, followed by binding around his midsection and neck.

Well and truly pinned. It is a feeling of vulnerability to which he is not accustomed, and he does not like the way it makes his heart beat wildly in his chest. In the lobby of the last motel the Winchesters stayed in, there had been a display of butterflies on the wall, all of them impaled with pins and labeled in the name of human discovery.

"You may have him when I am finished," Haniel says. Maruel's fading footsteps signal her departure. "It appears it is just you and me, Castiel. Or would you prefer your new name? I heard you have been answering to something else."

_Cas._

He remains silent, cheek pressed against metal, and stares at the far wall.

Haniel wears the body of a man with tanned skin and kind eyes, perhaps the father to a small child or the lover of someone with the same, quiet gaze. His hands are big and callused, marked in a way that speaks of human hardship. Haniel could fix the calluses easily but probably prefers the abrasiveness; it makes holding smooth things easier.

"Tell me," Haniel says, rolling a small tray table lined with tools and instruments of all shapes and sizes, all polished to a shine, all glowing darkly under the too-bright lights. "Do you remember our venture into Hell? I do believe you were the youngest in our merry band, the youngest and lowest in status." Haniel pronounces status in Received Pronunciation, which does not match the face he is wearing.

Haniel always did favor corporal punishment and started such a trend on Earth years and years ago. He preyed on the God-fearing by invoking the belief that corporal mortification would bring one closer to God by physically purging their sins. Haniel was also one of those assigned to retrieve Dean from Hell and had said something about leaving Dean there, that he had broken and the first Seal with him, so there really was no need to drag him out. Castiel has never liked Haniel.

"You can speak," Haniel allows, lifting a blade and flicking the end, eliciting a high-pitched hum that has him smiling in satisfaction.

"I do remember."

"You became so offended when I suggested leaving Dean Winchester in the Pit. So much so that the others in our garrison spoke of your reaction quite often. I believe it was the first time any of us had taken notice of you… and your… let us call them 'differences'. Because you are different, Castiel. So very different." Haniel moves gracefully to the side of the table but does not come into contact with it. "This is the first time I can remember since the first war that I have had cause to use these fine instruments. The metal is the same we use to forge our weapons. Can you see this, Castiel?"

He strains against his bonds, eyes on the table of tools. He must get away.

Haniel holds up the blade, too far for Castiel to comfortably see, and admires it openly. "Such graceful design. There is not one flaw in it. Fabriel made the whole set as a means of aiding interrogation of Lucifer's troops during the first war. We lost so many of our own to his ranks. I confess none of us had the clever tongue he employed to sway our brethren into following him. Obedience, Castiel, is ingrained in all of us, no matter who it is we follow. Except, perhaps, you."

He stills when the tip of the blade is suddenly a hair from his eye.

"Who is it that you serve, Castiel?"

"I serve the Lord, Our God." Who would want His angels to protect His most vulnerable children: Humanity.

A hiss escapes his clenched teeth as the skin beneath his eye splits for the blade, a bit of Grace eking out and burning like Hellfire. The blade parts his flesh slowly, almost like an afterthought, and it goes on for so long it takes him a moment to realize it has stopped.

Haniel places the small blade down and then picks up a very large instrument, the same one he had been holding when Maruel escorted Castiel inside.

Castiel begins to struggle anew.

The construct of a bird's wing is far simpler than that of an angel. Humans seem to believe angels possess wings similar to a bird's, as if a group of hollow bones and digits could ever fully encompass something like an angel's wing. When Castiel showed the shadow of his wings to Dean in that barn, he projected them as what Dean would expect from an angel, if only for the sake of verisimilitude. Angels do not have feathers. An angel's wings can be many or few, depending upon rank and service. His own wings span the length of the Chrysler building, and upon the retrieval and remaking of Dean Winchester he was granted a third. Three wings, moving him up the hierarchy to enjoy the rank of Principality.

Here, in this place, they are as strong and fragile as a bird's.

Haniel's large, callused fingers find his third, his gift from the Host, and pulls it tightly, the radius grinding to dust in his grip. Castiel screams, tries to flap his other wings in counterpoint to the one trapped, but it does nothing to stop Haniel from digging deeper and piercing the skin.

He screams. He screams and screams and the room echoes with the force of it, but Haniel keeps digging until his entire hand is inside and gripping the ulna, wrenching it back. The bone breaks off with a jagged, wet snap, and Castiel chokes. His eyes burn with the pain, his face wet with tears and saliva, unable to drag in enough air to prevent his lungs from feeling as though they will collapse. The restraints on his legs hold him fast and he writhes, trying to get away from the pain. He cannot even move his head.

Haniel pulls his hand back, tearing ligament and muscle, and Castiel feels it unravel in his wing, sinew and vein stretching and pulling away. The fabric of his white shirt is wet and sticks to his back, and he heaves, vomiting bile and spit over the edge of the table, choking on acid and terror.

The bloody, twisted half of his wing hits the white floor in his line of blurred vision, a mottled and utterly destroyed thing. He weeps openly at the sight of it. It had been a gift. A reward. Something to show for a new, tentative connection to a man who did not believe in angels, but did believe he deserved Hell.

The base of the wing, the part that remains, throbs with a kind of pain he has never felt, the nerves exposed and the bones twisted and broken. It takes much to hurt an angel. This is too much.

"Tell me who it is you serve," Haniel says again, hands and arms caked with blood, ichor, and feathers. "And remember, we can hear your intent, Castiel. When you answered, you were not speaking on behalf of Heaven. We can stay here, Castiel, for as long as you like."

It takes a long time to stop crying, to wrestle his unnecessary breathing under control, and when he finally does it wins him a smile from Haniel.

He thinks of Dean on the dock, tipping his head back to feel the sun, relaxed in the cheap embrace of the chair, careless. Loose. Until Castiel handed him a slip of paper with an address written in the fold. Dean will never know what the reason was for being there.

"I serve my Father, and this is not the right path."

It is not the correct answer. And so Haniel pulls his the rest of his wing out from the root.

He does not remember anything after that, having most likely either detached himself from the torture or slipped into unconsciousness - both frighteningly human reactions. He comes around to the sound of his shoes scraping along the floor, Maruel dragging him down the halls of the maze by his dislocated arm.

"Oh god, _Cas_."

The panel in the wall slides open with a whisper and Maruel drops him inside the room, leaving just as quickly.

As soon as the door shuts and seals, there are hands hovering over him, unsure of where to touch, how to help. He hiccups a query, struggling to open his eyes. One of them has been slashed out. He can feel bits of it still in the socket, the optic nerve spilling over bone and skin to rest against his cheek.

"Cas, this… Cas, I don't know what to do."

His tongue has been bitten through, or else he would answer Sam.

Sam.

Why is _Sam_ here? If Sam is here, then Dean is alone and unprotected. In the face of Castiel's would-be betrayal, the angels will most certainly go after him.

He reaches out a trembling hand - thumb and middle finger both broken, fingertips removed - but it is gently captured and enfolded, held.

"Don't try to move, Cas. Fuck. _Fuck_, I don't know where… Cas, tell me how to help. There's… there's nothing in here. Not even water. I can't - There's so much blood, Cas, and - oh God, what happened to your _back_…" Sam's voice fades out for a moment, then comes back, too loud and shrill. "I didn't find a door. I didn't even get through the maze - There's too much of it. It was sheer dumb luck I even got back here."

Door? He mutters something and shifts his hips, wincing at the pull of muscles in his back as he does. The hole where his third wing once was is still leaking blood. Haniel did not cauterize the wound, and he can feel every trickle of new blood spilled.

Sam is in Heaven and is speaking of doors while Dean is no doubt poking around the warehouse, searching for Sam, for a way to get his brother back.

_Door._

No. No, Dean is not searching for Sam, because Sam is still with him. This has happened. This is a memory.

He rolls away from Sam and vomits up blood. "It will be there."

Sam tears the bottom of his shirt and presses the fabric to one of his many wounds. "You look like shit."

"I feel accordingly." His words are thick and slurred. "This seems to be worse than I remember."

"Heaven sucks," Sam says feelingly. "You lived through _twenty years_ of this? How?"

Haniel's torture will eventually run together until it is a constant river of pain and degradation. Eventually, one day, Haniel will barter with him. Express his loyalties in exchange for reprieves. A pledge of faith to Heaven and he will remain untouched for an hour. A pledge of devotion to the Host, and Maruel will not come to his cell for a day. All this, with the eventual addition of gentle contact. Weaning him from the punishment and onto love in return for his allegiance. Break him of his ties to Dean.

By the end of twenty years, he will be healed and will never serve Man. Or Dean.

"Heaven can be very persuasive." He spits up something plush and wet. Congealed blood. "You have to find the door. Maruel will return very soon."

"What the fuck are they doing this for? I mean, this seems a bit… not Heaven-like, even for them," Sam hisses, removing the balled up fabric from the wound and tossing it away. It hits the floor with a loud squelch.

"Because of what I was going to tell you and Dean."

He can _hear_ Sam frown. "Tell us what?"

"Everything." About the real plan behind the breaking of the Seals. About Lilith. About Lucifer and Michael and the roles the Winchesters were created to play. He had been ready to tell Dean everything, to show he was not a hammer, that he recognized the fact that Heaven was wrong and God was suspiciously absent, and he would Fall in order to help them fight against Heaven's machinations.

He coughs up another bloody pulp. Internal injuries. Many internal injuries. Things that will take time to heal. His abilities to fix himself have been severely diminished as part of his sentence. He remembers Haniel did damage to his heart and he was forced to slowly bleed out until his Grace was allowed to intervene.

Sam shifts next to him and puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. Right where Haniel's blade was buried, severing several nerves and arteries. "Not there."

"Right. Sorry. Shit." The hand moves to his hair, just resting. "We have to get you out of here."

"Maruel will return very shortly. You will have to continue your search for the door."

Sam scoffs. "Like hell I'm leaving you to go through this all over again!"

He smiles, warmed by Sam's refusal. It is nice, having a friend. "You have no choice. Do you have a weapon on you?"

"A knife. It's not anything - it's just a knife."

"That's fine," he says and runs his tongue over his teeth. Three of them are missing, two are loose. All taste of blood. "Dig it into the wall as you go, leave marks. Keep going until you find it. Do not keep coming back, not even if you feel you have been gone too long. I will survive this, Sam, as long as you find the door. I will find you."

Their own door slides open and Maruel steps inside. He can hear the angel's footsteps as she draws near, as she bends and grips his wrist. Dislocated arm, of course. She drags him from the room and he whimpers as it jars his many wounds and broken bones.

"I'm going!" Sam shouts needlessly, but it settles the anxiety that sits in his belly to hear Sam go. He does not want Sam to see what will happen next. This time, Haniel will focus on his belly and everything contained within.

Time passes oddly in Heaven, as in it exists on all planes and not at all. Haniel, however, makes it seem as if it stretches as it does on Earth, makes him feel every second as though it were an eternity. Haniel asks questions without ever truly expecting an answer and will sometimes hum cheerily as he pulls out the bones in Castiel's left hand, like a child twisting and plucking away at blades of grass. His voice has deserted him and his screaming has been rendered as a rasp, his cheeks wet.

It has been eight years - if he were to count time like that - and he feels as though he is waiting for something.

Haniel hums a song Castiel does not recognize and drops the last of his carpals into a bowl on his little tray table. It pings against the metal. Castiel watches as what is left of the blood in his deflated hand, just empty skin now, and wonders if it is possible to become used to pain like this. Eight years of this, and it still feels as though it is the first time.

"I must admit, Castiel, that you are very… obstinate in your beliefs. So let's not talk about them. Let's talk about your interests instead." Haniel lifts a small jug onto his tray table and something sloshes around inside. "Let's talk about Dean Winchester."

He hopes Haniel will attribute his flinch to the pain, but Haniel is so much more observant than that.

"Dean Winchester is such an interesting… man."

The abused flesh inside his throat bleeds anew as his breathing breaks free of his control and begins taking on a frantic edge, a wheeze of desperation scraping out. Haniel smiles at him.

"I remember when he lay with Anael. Not the act itself, because I have other things to do than watch a monkey and a traitor rut, but your reaction… Oh, it positively _rippled_ through the Host. Such emotion you felt! I believe they call it 'jealousy'. Possession is not something we covet, Castiel, and yet there you were… longing to rip her apart for daring to touch him. He is a human! And not a particularly virtuous one, at that. Is it that he is Mikael's vessel that stirs you so? Or is it that he _is_ a base, disgusting human? You seem to favor them over your own brethren these days. Do not think we don't know how you felt about the raising of Samhain. You were _relieved_ the town was saved."

He had been relieved, yes. But it was not until he sat on a bench with Dean and watched children playing in a park that he understood why. That he knew destroying his Father's creations - those works of art - was wrong.

"But he makes you feel. He makes you want. It truly is disgusting to watch you simper after him like a diseased cur." Haniel creates a small spark in his hand and flings it into the jar, which catches and explodes upward in a blaze. Holy fire.

"Dean is the Righteous Man," Castiel grits out, shrinking away from the jug as Haniel regards it and then Castiel's boneless hand. "That is not simply a title. He _is_ righteous. His soul is -"

"Yes, yes, we have all heard from you about the brightness of his soul." Haniel waves the praise away and considers the jug. "I have not experimented with the effects of liquid holy fire. Shall we give it a try? It would be a great aid in battle."

"Please," he gasps, struggling so hard that the bones in his other wrist crack against his bonds. His boneless hand pulls through the restraint with a wet _slurhk_ but is captured by Haniel. "No, please!"

Haniel smiles and tips the jug. "Heaven thanks you for your contribution to the war effort."

He screams as the fire pours over his hand, searing skin and the shredded muscle underneath. Haniel holds his wrist tightly, the bones grinding together as he struggles, but does nothing except place the jug back on the tray and watch as the fire consumes Castiel's hand.

"Interesting," Haniel says, barely audible over the screaming. "It is a liquid and yet is flame. The physical world is wasted on the humans. Although, I wonder at its effects on human flesh."

Castiel cries piteously, thrashing. Haniel drops his hand and retreats back to his counter, bringing the jug with him. Castiel curls into himself, holding the bare remains of his hand against his chest, and grits his teeth against his sobs, sucking in air that is nowhere near what he needs.

The pain eventually lessens so he is somewhat aware of the room around him, and he stops struggling, collapsing weakly onto the table, still shuddering. How can this be allowed? How can Heaven call this just punishment?

"I have been authorized to try it. On a human," Haniel says off-handedly, turning around and smiling brightly. "And I know just the one. Do you think it will remind him very much of Hell?"

Sucking in a breath, Castiel holds himself very still.

"Although I have made sure he will never forget. The nightmares, you know. They can be very… colorful. It wouldn't do for him to forget his time there. He could become complacent, and we can't have that."

Castiel's heart stops.

Dean. He means Dean. Haniel means to bring Dean to this place of blood-spattered chrome for reasons that amount to nothing more than his humanity. If this has been sanctioned by Heaven, then the plans have changed and Castiel's Re-Education is in fact a Termination. Dean, as a human, would never survive Haniel.

He will not let it happen. The Father, wherever He is, is either testing them or is simply no longer there. It does not matter. This is not what The Father spun into motion, and Castiel will not allow Heaven's taint to reach Dean Winchester. He has been through enough between Heaven, Hell, and the First Realm. The First…

A dream. This is a memory. This has happened. Eight years into his twenty and he has not broken yet. He will not, because he already broke and then healed and is not going to do it again.

"Tell me, Castiel. Has Samuel Winchester found your door?"

His heart stops.

This is not how… the rules of this place have changed yet again. Haniel should not be aware of anything that happens outside of this room. If the laws of this place can transform so easily, then so can he.

Gritting his teeth, he imagines a giant blade with a serrated edge and powered by electricity, much like the one in the trunk of the Impala, the one Sam calls a 'chainsaw' and Dean calls 'Betty'. It is a powerful thing, this chainsaw he dreams up, and down by his feet he hears the roar of it coming to life.

_Cut my bindings_, he thinks, and feels them fall away under the moving kiss of the saw.

Haniel turns and Castiel swings the blade and buries it in Haniel's throat. He pushes, forcing his one arm to take the weight of it, and presses forward until the blade slices through Haniel's vessel's spinal column and keeps pressing in until the head is completely severed from the body.

When Haniel's Grace explodes out of him the way it did from Juniel, Castiel reaches out and sticks the stump of his arm into it. It burns, but in a way unlike the holy fire. It feels cleaner, softer, like overlooking Jodhpur and breathing in when Dean leaves the bathroom after taking a shower. When the Grace dissipates, Castiel lowers his arm. The end of his arm has been cauterized, cleansed, healed. There is no hand but there is also no pain.

He coughs, tasting blood, then looks around the room. The saw is heavy but easy to wield, so when the wall lifts and Maruel walks in, he is able to rush her, blade thundering as he slices her vessel's head at the neck. The room is sprayed violently in red, covering him, the white walls, the damned metal table where his blood has already dried.

"This is my memory," he gasps aloud, dropping his arm to rest the blade of the chainsaw on the floor. "This is mine. Dean and Sam are_mine_. Do you hear me? They are _mine_."

The path back to his cell is easy to take, as his shoes - and bare feet - know it well, having been dragged along it enough times. When he reaches it, he knows to go no further than the bare stretch of wall he stands in front of, and he turns his head and stares down the other end. Sam took off in that direction the last time they spoke, and so he pushes away from where the door to his cell would be, and down the hall.

The skin of his arm, the stump, easily finds the indent of Sam's knife easily and he keeps it there, using it as a guide, running as fast as he can, fighting through the pain in his side where Haniel stuck pins inside him. They rip at the soft tissue of his intestines as he runs.

"Sam!" No answer.

He stops running, drops both arms and stares down the white walls that encase him on either side, stretching on for forever. This will not do. Sam has been roaming these halls for years; it will take nearly a decade to find him.

Moving the walls back and away, so he may see the plane on which this false Heaven sits, would suit his purpose well enough, so he looks at the wall to his right and thinks, _move._ It does, and the one opposite it follows suit, pushing back until there is nothing except open space.

"Sam!" He shouts again, and his voice echoes across the plane. After a moment, a faint sound answers him, and he runs in that direction, tramping over years and years of hardship and pain. On the horizon, there is the shadow of some kind of structure, something he has seen before in a place that was not real, but no matter how far he runs, it does not come closer. "Sam! Can you hear me?"

"Cas!" It is soft, but there, and it is not long until he can see Sam, standing tall in front of three doors.

"Jesus Christ, you look - Oh my god, _where is your hand_?" Sam stares at the stump with something akin to horror and sympathy, his eyes wide.

Castiel takes care to tuck it into the sleeve of his coat, away from Sam's stare, and turns to regard the three doors. Iris warned them about these. Three doors: one to trick, one to trap, one to kill. There is no way to differentiate between them; they are made of the same smooth, dark wood as the others in the endless hallway of Demos Oneiroi.

"Which one?" He grunts, a sudden pain bursting in his abdomen, a reminder of the several slivers of metal that puncture and rip at his insides. Even dead, Haniel still causes him agony. "Sam, pick a door."

Sam rakes his hands through his hair and shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know which one to choose!"

"Pick a _door_, Sam!" He shouts, tasting the bite of blood in the back of his throat. The pins inside him hit something that forces him down to one knee, curling in on himself in hopes of containing the pain.

"Cas," Sam says quietly, breathless. "Cas, which one would you pick?"

Blearily, he lifts his head and sees Sam pace from door to door to door, frantic. "Sam, I asked you -"

"And I'm asking you," Sam bites back. "Which one would _you_ pick?"

There is symbolism in everything. Had Sam asked him that same question when he was an angel, Castiel would have chosen the door farthest to the right, because that is where an angel sits. Angels sit to the right of God and demons to the left. The left is the mark of the Devil. The middle, of course, is God. Or perhaps the middle is Humanity, caught between the crosshairs.

"The middle," he gasps out, his other knee hitting the floor hard. Blood dribbles from his lips.

"And I'd pick the one on the right."

They both look at the door on the very left.

Wordlessly, Sam bends and throws one of Cas's arms around his shoulders, and they slowly make their way to the door, every step taking a little more of his consciousness until he can no longer walk on his own and Sam must drag him there.

Sam opens the door.

"I'm sorry in advance if this kills us," Sam mutters.

_Dean_, Cas thinks, and closes his eyes as they step inside.


	7. Six

**Six. ****  
><strong>**"Though dreams can be deceiving, they serve for sweet relieving when fantasy and reality lie too far apart."**

He wakes to the feeling of someone shaking him and, before he allows himself to open his eyes, he flexes his hand. His hand, there and whole and wonderful. He can hold a piece of fruit or someone's heart in this hand. Such a small thing in the grand scheme, a hand, but it is a beautiful marvel, not for the small number of bones, but for the fact that no one knows what it is to not have one until they no longer do.

"Cas. _Cas_!"

Grunting, he rolls over and blinks his eyes open. It takes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. The first thing he sees is a cardboard box with a red logo burned into its side, and it surprises him so that he shoots up from the floor and looks around. This is not the hallway of doors. They went through the left door and -

"Sam," Cas whispers, feeling his eyes grow wider and wider with every increasingly desperate breath he takes. "Why are we in Iris's diner?"

It is the back room of the diner where they had lain on the dirty floor and placed their very lives into the hands of a goddess with a hatred for angels. At the time, he had never been so frightened; learning of Morpheus's role in the universe was nothing compared to seeing the seething rage in Iris's eyes before he entered Demos Oneiroi.

He cannot allow himself to think what being here means. Sam, however, can.

"Cas," Sam whispers, staring at something just beyond him, and Cas turns, swallowing a sound that he cannot identify.

Lying on the floor, crumbled like a written spell that has been deemed useless, is Iris. Her body is contorted terribly, arms and legs bent at unnatural angles, her neck broken and twisted until the skin creases over itself. Her eyes are open, blank. She is utterly still. Utterly dead.

"Oh God, Cas," Sam breathes wetly. "We chose the wrong door."

Unacceptable.

He is on top of her before he actually understands what is bubbling and curdling under his skin, hands around her, fingers digging in until he can feel bone. Something snaps when he shakes her hard. "Wake up, Iris! This is not what I was promised!"

She does not answer. He shakes her harder, jarring all those broken bones, all that displaced flesh. This is not Iris. This is a melted, forsaken image.

"I gave you my Grace!" He bellows, and the words drag like knives up the tender inside of his throat. "I gave you _everything_! Take us back! Take us back, Iris, we're not finished!"

"Cas, stop!" Sam's shout does little to stem the rage. "It's over! Cas, let her go! She's dead!"

"She is not! It's a visage! This is not Iris!"

"It's over!" Sam pulls him away from her, away from where his fingers so desperately want to curl around her already broken neck and keep breaking until there is nothing left but dust bearing his mark. "It's over! We chose the wrong door! Oh, God, we chose wrong."

No. It could not have been the wrong door. They had only three to choose from, and there is nothing that says all three doors were the ones they had been warned of. There are millions of doors in Demos Oneiroi. They chose _one_. Only one, and it had been the wrong choice.

"We can't get back in," Sam cries, voice rising on a shout, and he lashes out with his foot and kicks over several crates full of bagged bread. "He's going to be in there forever. We let him down. _We let him down_."

There is something wrong with Cas's chest. It is too tight, too small, and his heart feels as though it is going to break through his ribs and burst out. Or it is his lungs and there is too much oxygen, too much carbon dioxide being expired and not enough being taken in, and he cannot breathe, the room is flashing, and it is hot, and he tugs at the tie around his neck and pulls at his collar, but it does not help, he is suffocating, being crushed by the walls of boxes and crates, by Sam's angry shouts, the room spins and he staggers -

"Cas," Sam shouts, grabbing at him, "Cas, breathe!"

They chose the wrong door. One misstep and they effectively sealed Dean's fate, left him trapped in a non-reality, a nightmare. A single choice made, and everything changes. There will be an Apocalypse; Lucifer will continue his slow murder of God's Earth, and every living thing will suffer incredible torment. And Cas does not care. The entire world will fall away into the fire, and it does not matter. Dean is lost to him. He has failed Dean.

The world narrows until it is made up of this reality. There are no more doors, no more chances, and he has failed Dean. Dean. The tattered soul he dragged forcefully from the depths of Hell, through fire, frost, and rock, made whole by feeding it bits of himself until a body grew around it, fingers and toes and eyes and a mouth, scars from the hundreds of bloody and brutal yesterdays smoothed down at his command, until it was only his touch skin knew. That same soul, so full of love and righteousness, willing to stand against Heaven, against their very Father, in order to save the world. That same soul, for whom Cas was willing to do the same. For whom he gave everything.

And… it was for nothing.

"Cas?"

Something tickles at the skin of his cheek, the barest hum of a whisper, and he jerks back in surprise at the sensation. There is another, and then another, and he swipes at them, then appeals to Sam, because surely this experience is altogether human and therefore explainable.

"I… I'm bleeding."

"No, Cas. You're crying." Tears. There are tears in Sam's eyes. In his own eyes. That's what this is. A biological reaction to an overwhelming sense of defeat and loss. To surviving an explosion meant to kill.

There is a sound from beyond the room, a jingle of chiming metal followed by a muffled voice, and Sam releases him, turns in surprise, but Cas finds he cannot move. He cannot do anything except stand and stare at his shoes and _cry_.

"Cas, someone's here." Sam says it urgently, with emphasis, as if it matters. It is born of a life spent on the run, no doubt, but Cas finds he does not want to run. Dean cannot run. Dean cannot open his eyes in this plane, and nor will he ever. A machine breathes for him due to Cas's folly.

"Debbie?" The voice calls. It belongs to a man, older, lines from laughing pulling at the corners of his eyes, dressed in a white shirt and slacks. "Debbie, it's Alan. Alan Parker? Just a wellness check, Deb. Got a call from Nancy Waterston who said you didn't open when you -"

Alan Parker stops talking the moment he sees the woman Iris pretends to be, dead on the floor, and draws a weapon that languished against his back, held there by the waistband of his pants. His other hand reaches for a leather wallet, which flips down to reveal a golden blazon. "POLICE! PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEADS! BOTH OF YOU! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM AND GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

Sam lifts his hands, somehow managing to look defenseless while towering over everyone in the room. "Sir, please, there's been a misunderstanding -"

"ON THE GROUND!"

Dimly, Cas can hear Sam do as ordered, compliant in a way a Winchester never is, bringing that hulking body to the floor just as he did under Iris's cold, calculating eyes. There is a grunt and the clank of metal against metal, and Alan Parker is talking to a voice that is distorted and followed by the sound of television snow.

"YOU! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

But Cas is down. He is as low as he can possibly be. Alan Parker does not understand this and forces him down further, until Cas's chin smacks hard off of the floor and his hands are wrenched behind his back, bound by chains he once could have crushed with a thought. They hold him fast, straining the muscles in his shoulders, and suddenly there are more men dressed in navy uniforms pouring into the room, guns drawn, all of them shouting until the air is saturated with their anger and fear and the words run together like syrup.

They move, and then they fly, a steady rumble as they pass the world by until he is sitting in a room not unlike Haniel's chamber. The chrome walls have been replaced by stone and concrete, with the addition of a long window that reflects instead of shows. The metal underneath him is unforgiving and cold, as is the table upon which he automatically rests his hands. Keeping himself from screaming until his throat is bloody and raw takes most of his concentration; an indiscernible amount of time passes before he realizes Sam is not with him.

More time passes. He closes his eyes on his reflection and tries to fall asleep. He has never consciously attempted such a thing, as angels do not sleep, but in order to truly dream a human must be deeply asleep. Perhaps then he can re-enter Demos Oneiroi. And, yes, he may pass through the Gate of Ivory, but it would take very little willpower to claw his way out and go through the Gate of Horn, back into the fray, back into the game.

But sleep does not come. His mind will not rest, too full of failure and alternate scenarios, of what lies behind the doors they did not choose, of Dean lying in the hospital bed and needing a machine to breathe for him because his brain can no longer do it.

Iris's death is odd and unexpected, but Cas doesn't care. It has no bearing on anything other than the fact that she is no longer of use. There have to be other ways into Demos Oneiroi. No matter how elusive Morpheus is, he cannot be the only one with access.

There is the matter of the Apocalypse, of course, but until Lucifer confronts them and demands Sam himself, Cas will put it out of his mind. There will be whispers in the shadows, creatures and beasts of old who will know others who will know others, and one of them will have an answer. He will make as many deals as his soul can handle until he can go back.

But… no. He is human now. And there is human law to abide. He and Sam were found in a room with a dead woman, a woman who was murdered viciously, and no matter how vehemently they profess their innocence, the evidence is stacked against them. No one will believe the word of two strangers over the body of a beloved citizen. If they are brought to trial, they will most certainly be found guilty and imprisoned for life.

Despair claws at his throat and he stifles a sob. There is no hope here.

The door opens and Alan Parker steps inside, professional, a manila folder tucked under his arm. He takes the seat opposite Cas and regards him silently.

"You seemed a little out of it when I found you, so you may not have caught my name." The man is polite, smiling faintly, and Cas cannot trust it. "Alan Parker. Detective. Been in Kellogg damn near all my life and a customer of Debbie Cormier's since she opened shop. So, how about you? Got a name?"

A name. He has had so many. Son. Angel. Castiel. Soldier of Thursday. Cas. So many names for so many roles, and now there is only one. "Cas."

Alan Parker lifts an eyebrow, pleasantly and falsely surprised. "Oh? I have it on good authority that you have another name."

The manila folder is tossed onto the table, sliding with a _shhh_ at him. On the front, in print he does not recognize, it reads:

**MADISON STREET PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC****  
>520 WEST MADISON ST<strong>**  
>PONTIAC, IL 61764<strong>**  
><strong>**  
>PATIENT NAME: JAMES NOVAK<strong>**  
>PRIMARY: ROBERT HEINS, DO<strong>**  
>DATE: 918/2008****  
>DATE OF RECORDS RELEASE: 129/2010**

Alan Parker is smiling outright now. "James Novak from Pontiac. Jimmy, according to your wife. Sorry, _ex_-wife. History of psychiatric issues stemming from fall of '08, beginning with the claim angels were contacting you. Left your wife - sorry, _ex_-wife - and little girl to… well, no one is quite sure about that one. Your ex-wife Amelia said you came back briefly and then left again; that was this past September. Not a peep until today."

Cas stares down at the folder, at the printed words that bear the name of a man who is no longer. He does not know how to answer without sounding guilty, without sounding crazy.

"You murdered Debbie Cormier, didn't you? You and that tall fellow."

He swallows and whispers, "No."

"You sure about that, Jimmy? Because we can stay here. We can stay as long as you like. I'm in no rush."

Cas places his hands flat on the table and says, very clearly, "No."

"No?" The pleasant façade drops like a winter sunset and is replaced with frost, sharper and colder than the best-forged Enochian steel. "No? Well, we've got a dead body and several witnesses who saw you enter the diner late this morning and never come back out. The CSI boys are dusting for prints now, and I'll give you three guesses as to whose they are - and the first two don't count. You're done, Jimmy. Done. You and Sam Winchester."

Cas says nothing.

"Yeah, this isn't the first time your boy Sam's been in the System. There was quite an investigation a while back. Him and his brother. His brother running around town, too?"

"His brother is gone," he whispers, the black text blurring.

Alan Parker snorts. "Here's how this is gonna go: your prints are going to show up at the scene, which will be more than enough for an indictment. You're going to get some freebie lawyer, or maybe your ex-wife'll be kind enough to get you a good one. You'll plead insanity, go to some mental house, and take nice little white pills forever, and I'll make sure your boy Sam gets a needle in his arm."

"If I were an angel again," Cas says slowly, imbuing the words with all the hatred and disdain he has for this man, "I would rend your body asunder. Sam Winchester is no murderer, and neither was Dean. They were going to save you, despite how little you deserve it. If you speak their names, you will show the respect they're due."

There is a flash of surprise on Alan Parker's face, which morphs into sudden shock as the door bursts open and a single shot is fired, right between the policeman's angry eyes.

Cas watches the body crumble onto the table, blood leaking from the smoking hole, then he looks up into the rather annoyed face of Gabriel.

"Please don't tell me you spent your time in here crying." Gabriel sneers at Alan Parker's still form. "That loser was hardly worth it."

"Alan Parker was doing his job. He may have been a horrible person, but it was his -"

"I was talking about your boy, Dean," Gabriel says, then opens his arms wide and grins. "No hug for big brother?"

Cas stands, unsteady, still reeling with loss. "Gabriel, where have you -"

"I got word," Gabriel says, dropping his arms, suddenly grave in a way Gabriel has never been, not even as an archangel trapped in holy fire. "The docs in charge of the coma patients have been given permission to pull the plug. If you want your veggie-bear to stay alive, we have to get to the hospital five minutes ago."

Gabriel lingers in the doorway, leaning out slightly, gauging their escape route while brandishing his gun like the heroes in Dean's favorite films. He jerks his head and then darts out, leaving Cas to follow. He cannot help but look back at the slumped form of Alan Parker, who may have been a cruel man, but he was doing his job. He was someone's son, maybe someone's lover or father. He was someone.

Cas sucks in a breath and shakes his head, shakes the guilt away. There are always casualties. That is what life is.

The hallway is bustling with people, police officers and criminals and families and lawyers, but all of them - even the bravest - cower at the sight of Sam Winchester brandishing a sleek-looking shotgun. He cannot reconcile this Sam with the one he has come to know and call a friend. A best friend. The rage and desperation on his face suggests he is in a dark place, one where Cas will travel if it means the Sam he knows will come back.

"Cas, you okay?" Sam asks loudly, and Gabriel tsks at a woman who is reaching for the gun at her hip, his own gun pointed at her forehead.

"I'm fine," he says, unable to tear his eyes from the tableau of pandemonium. "Sam, Gabriel has discovered -"

Sam nods grimly. "Yeah. We're going now." To the room full of terrified people he shouts, "And there will be _Hell_ to pay if you try to stop us!"

"Easy there, McClane," Gabriel says with an eye-roll, strolling easily for the exit, twirling his gun like a toy around his finger. "Don't ruin my dreams of a high-octane car chase before they're even born."

"I've had it up to here with dreams," Sam mutters, and runs for the door. Cas follows and is almost shot by a young officer with very quick reflexes, but not quick enough to dodge Sam's answering shot to the shoulder. The officer goes down with a cry and Cas is outside before he knows of his fate. They are the only two on the top step of the police station. "Where the hell is Gabriel?"

The cheerful honking of a horn does not get their attention, but the blaring sirens do. Gabriel pulls up to the curb in a police car, playing a loud and obnoxious tune on the horn. "Let's go, ladies! I give us three minutes before they're riding our asses."

Sam jumps and slides across the hood of the car with grace and immediately gets into the passenger side. Cas nearly rips the rear door off its hinges in order to get into the car. Had he still retained even a drop of Grace, he would have. And thrown it into another police vehicle, just to make a point.

The tires squeal as Gabriel forces the accelerator down to the floor, and Cas barely gets the door shut before they are flying out of the police parking lot and onto the adjacent street. Several cars are forced to brake hard to avoid collision and Gabriel acknowledges them all with a wave and a honk of the horn. From what Cas has experienced riding with the Winchesters in the Impala, Dean enjoys speed, although Cas could not feel it as an angel.

He feels it now.

"Gabriel!" he shouts, his hand automatically searching for something above the window. It is a small, plastic bar, and he fits his hand around it and grips it hard. It makes him feel a bit safer, which is stupid. "Gabriel, you'll kill us all if you keep driving like this!"

"If I went any slower, we'd be too late to save everybody's favorite dipshit, and then you'd do the _eyes_ and I'd never hear the end of it," Gabriel calls back, cavalier, punctuated by the sounds of sirens that do not belong to their car. Cas turns in his seat to see four police cars coming up from behind, speeding to match them.

Gabriel grins and turns to Sam. "Andre, if you would?"

Sam unbuckles his belt and rolls down the window. He turns until he hangs out of the window, braces his foot against the floor, and brings up his shotgun. He aims with barely a thought and fires two shots. One of them misses the cars. One of them punctures a tire and one of the four cars is forced to stop.

Cackling, Gabriel rolls down his own window and fires a few shots from his gun at the cars behind them, still managing to drive in a somewhat straight path.

Cas grips the bar and squints against the wind that bursts in the back seats, swallowing his anxiousness and attempting to make heads or tails of where they are going. The crack of Sam's shotgun does nothing to deter his concentration on the buildings and landmarks that whip past them as Gabriel speeds faster and faster toward the hospital.

"Incoming!" Sam shouts over the wind as two more police cars spill onto the street from a side road. He fires three shots at the new arrivals, twisting to fire six more rounds. The driver of one of the new cars slumps back with a red spatter against his windshield, and the car swerves until it hits a pole. Two more cars lose windshields.

Their own back window explodes into a million glistening shards, and Cas covers his head with his arms. "GABRIEL!"

"Nice shooting, Rex!" Gabriel snarks at Sam, firing what's left in his gun, which he tosses back at Cas. "Reload!"

"Where is the ammunition?" He casts about, finding a small cache of what looks like magazine clips. He slides the spent one out and shoves in a new one, practiced, muscle memory holding onto its lessons from Dean. He shoves it back to Gabriel, who takes it with a slight fumble and begins firing anew. Two cars are forced to stop, both of them falling back and pulling over. There is one car left, and it pulls over, clearly outmatched.

Hancock Place looms over the old brick and stone buildings. Massachusetts General Hospital is not far away.

"Probably calling for backup," Gabriel shouts, laughing, "so predictable!"

The car comes to a screeching stop at the curb outside a building named 'Blake'. Cas throws the door open and slides out, bits of glass falling from his hair and shoulders as he steps onto the sidewalk. He turns, expecting Sam to do the same, but Sam is loading a clip into his gun.

"Sam -"

"Gabriel and I'll keep them busy," Sam says, eyes hard and mouth fixed in a thin line. "You get up there and stop them from pulling the plug. Fourth floor, room 449A. You do whatever it takes, Cas."

Gabriel salutes him with his gun, grinning wildly. There are sirens in the distance, growing louder. "Don't worry about us, kiddo. You stay in there as long as you like."

"Go!" Sam says, reaching through the open window to push at him, and Cas spins on his heels and takes off running.

The Blake lobby is teeming with people, all of whom stare at him as he runs inside. He stops, casting around for a sign, for a way upstairs. He spies the elevator and is about to go over, but there are several people waiting. He has no time. There is a door marked 'Stairs' and he swallows a gasp of relief, feet already hurrying to it.

There are eight flights of stairs, two for each floor, and by the time he reaches the third floor his legs are screaming for him to slow down. He ignores the burn in his calves and thighs, using the railing to propel him up the final two flights. When he reaches the door, he allows himself two seconds to breathe, then pushes himself through on shaking legs.

Carolyn Staubinger is at the nurse's station, talking on the telephone, her eyes exhausted but a smile curving her lips. Perhaps she is speaking to her lover, or a family member, or a friend, someone who can make her long day seem much shorter. She glances up and recognizes him, smile widening, but she looks confused when he runs past her and down the hall.

"Don't take Dean Winchester off the support machines!" He shouts, voice echoing, mingling with the pounding of his footsteps against the linoleum. 449A comes up on his right side very quickly. The door is closed and the window blocked, but he curls his hand around the handle and wrenches it open. "You can't -"

There is no doctor. There is no Dean. There is no _room_.

There is only an endless parade of stars across a vast, black expanse, galaxies whirling around each other, some devouring the smaller ones, forcing them to assimilate, while suns blaze for the pleasure of the planets within their thrall. This is not God's realm, but Morpheus's - Morpheus, dreamer of space and time, all here, all for him to stare at and shed tears over its terribleness.

A comet goes winging by, blaring a trail of color and pure energy as it goes. Above him, beyond the doorframe, a nebula shifts its glorious frock at him as solar winds from the nearby binary system make it dance.

He and Sam had been wrong. They did not choose the wrong door. They were not expelled; they never left.

_One will trick your mind._

He turns back to the hospital hallway, but there is nothing there except the stretch of space, leaving a tiny doorway hanging in the balance of perpetual expansion. There is nowhere to go.

Except.

If he steps off the frame, he will fall, and it will be further down than the drop from the broken street in Sam's dream. There is no end to space and time. He will not just fall; he will never stop.

Using the hand not gripping the door handle, he reaches up and wipes at his eyes, sucking in great, heaving gulps of air, unable to stop the flood of tears that will not be dammed, not even by force of will. His heart beats furiously.

_You know what? If you were to wave that time-traveling wand of yours and we'd do it all over again, I'd make the same call. All I know is… this. Here. All of it. It's worth it._

His hand falls from the handle.

"Dean," he gasps out, staring into the monstrous curve of stars and galaxies and worlds upon worlds upon worlds. "You're worth it."

He jumps.


	8. Seven

**Seven.****  
><strong>**"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."**

There is a dull ache in the backs of his legs, pushed deep, and that is what wakes him. It takes a long moment before he is willing to open his eyes, but even then it is dark in the cocoon of blankets he has made for himself. He is warm, his body utterly relaxed, and save for the ache, he cannot recall a moment when he felt so comfortable, safe.

He smiles. That is a lie. Last night. Last night he'd never been so comfortable and safe, with shaking fingers tickling up behind his knee, and a soft, wet mouth sucking a kiss at the core of him, tongue pushing inside to drag him to ruin. The callused hands and wicked laughter had spun him into something so very beautiful, a kinder ending than the one Heaven had made him for, and it is with this thought he stretches until his body complains and peeks over the edge of the navy duvet acquired three years ago.

The sun streams through the window, the one that does not have curtains despite his pleas for a dark room in the mornings, illuminating the old floorboards into appearing as if they're enchanted with some kind of glamour. He goes boneless against the sheets, closing his eyes against the sunlight and inhaling deeply of the sex, sweat, and laughter that clings to the pillowcase under his cheek. Falling back to sleep would be so easy; slumber's soft, gentle fingers brush over his eyes, his brow, and he is so close to the edge that -

A car horn blares outside and he jerks in surprise, suddenly very awake. He huffs and throws the duvet and the blankets off, shivering at the rush of cool October air over his skin. He slips into a pair of discarded sweatpants and casts about for a shirt, any shirt. He does not need to start the day with a compliment about his perky nipples.

There is a wrinkled Grateful Dead T-shirt, threadbare and soft from wear and a hundred washes, and he puts it on with a sigh, smoothing it over his stomach and running his fingers over a small, dark patch of dried something. Oil? Dirt? He will run a load of laundry later.

Yawning and stretching toward the ceiling, he relishes the burn of his calves - he gets cramps sometimes, not enough water consumption - and feels something pop in his shoulder. A sigh of relief escapes through his teeth on a whistle and he drops down to the floor, feet flat, arms swinging loosely. He feels wonderful. It astonishes him sometimes that he fought his slow descent into mortality so hard. There is so much to experience in the minutiae of human life. So much to feel that sometimes it all blurs together, and he can do nothing except close his eyes and immerse himself in it.

He smiles, surveys the bare, light blue walls of the room, the white trim of the windows that are a bit dusty from the ragweed and pollen of September, and rocks once on his heels before heading for the bathroom. They are just about out of hand soap. He fills the plastic bottle with water and shakes it until the lingering Dial mixes in. It will do until a run to the general store is needed.

The stairs groan beneath his bare feet, some holding his weight better than others, and he thinks it might be time to reinforce them somehow. He does not know much about how to make a piece of architecture structurally sound, but is willing to learn if it prevents him from someday falling through to the basement. Perhaps there is a way to fix them and still keep the creaks; he enjoys the reminder of the house's age. He feels a certain kinship with it, as he, too, is old.

He reaches up to the wall and brushes his fingertips over the glass frames that hang there, thumb running over a snapshot of where the Gate of Horn Club in Chicago once stood, over their smiles, over Mary's second grade photo, Olivia pressing a kiss to a deer's snout at a petting zoo. Olivia will be turning eight soon. He will have to find her something special. With any luck, she will still be in her dinosaur phase by that time, and he will call in the favor Balthazar owes him in order to obtain a fossil.

There is an explosion of sound, bacon hitting a hot pan, followed by a cheerful, _"Made a meal outta me __and come back for more!"_

Grinning, he moves quietly to lean in the doorway of the kitchen, content to watch Dean sing under his breath, the words interspersed with expletives when the bacon spits grease at him. A particularly large spatter has Dean jumping back, cursing loudly.

"This is the result of frying bacon while shirtless," Cas says, amused, and Dean glares at him.

"Someone had to make breakfast, you lazy bastard." Dean grins. "Who else is gonna do it? Not you."

Cas rolls his eyes. "It was a small fire."

"It was a _grease fire_," Dean corrects, moving gracefully so the handsome cut of his hipbones is on display, and folds Cas in his arms, pressing his chest against him. "That you threw _water_ on. Swing it any way you want, you still melted half the kitchen."

The teasing is softened by an apologetic, open-mouthed kiss to the skin of his neck, Dean's arms tightening around him. He sucks in a breath, eyes sliding shut, and he brings his hands up to rest on Dean's hips, thumbs rubbing over the belt loops of his jeans. Dean grins against his jaw and tips his head forward to nose into the hair at his temple.

They stand like that, swaying slightly in the middle of the kitchen, while the bacon burns in the skillet.

"You look good in that shirt," Dean mutters into the swell of Cas's cheek, "and I'm exercising some fucking incredible willpower right now in not tearing it off you."

Cas cannot ever remember having a fascination with muscles before he Fell. Human beings looked like human beings; it was their souls that attracted his attention. He knows Dean's soul like he knows his own, but his obsession with the hardness of Dean's body, the shift of it beneath his skin, has shown no signs of tempering. He runs covetous fingers up the planes of Dean's back, the wings of his shoulder blades, down over his chest, taking care to brush Dean's nipples with his thumbs, continuing over the hills of his abdominal muscles before ending the journey at Dean's waistband. Beautiful. Human beings are still beautiful to him, with all their faults and small wonders, but Dean is truly a masterpiece of creative design.

"Remember the willpower?" Dean asks raggedly, pressing closer into the hands that dip into his jeans. "Because you're testing the fuck out of it."

"I wish I were a poet," Cas murmurs, tipping his head slightly so Dean can kiss his cheek, his jaw, the space behind his ear, his neck, his clothed shoulder. "Or an artist. A singer. I would render you immortal somehow."

It wins him a shuddering laugh. "I don't know how you make that stalkery bullshit sound hot, but you do. It's like a super power."

Cas pulls away just enough to catch Dean's grin before he captures it with his mouth. Kissing is a very underrated gesture, he feels. If more people did it, many of the world's problems would be solved in little to no time at all. Kissing Dean, however, is nothing short of a miracle. He has no basis for comparison, but he knows he does not and never will want to kiss any lips but Dean's.

Dean cups his jaw and turns his head in such a way that their mouths slot together, this wet press of flesh against flesh that never fails to make Cas's heart pound as if it were the first time. He opens for Dean, as he has always done in one capacity or another, and concentrates on the feel of Dean's mouth dragging across his bottom lip and the way it leaves him shivering, unbalanced, drunk. The brush of Dean's stubble, like the moment he touched sandpaper in Bobby's shop and wondered at the abrasive sensation, burns hot and is as lightning pooling in his loins.

Dean walks him backward until the small of his back hits the counter. It is easier, with something to hold him up, because he cannot remember it ever being like this. It feels new, frightening, like getting exactly what he has ever wanted without knowing what to expect from this intimacy.

He shudders and twitches when Dean slides fingers into his hair, gripping lightly and moving him where Dean wants, and he can do nothing but take and take and take these deep, drugging kisses, with Dean's thigh pushing between his legs. Dean takes his weight as if he were born to do nothing else and bends him back slightly, pressing hard against him and slowly thrusting.

There is a soft tickle at his bottom lip that is followed by a slick invasion, Dean sliding his tongue inside, and he grips at Dean's arms, whining low in the bottom of his throat. His pulse flutters in his own throat and he can feel his heartbeat in every part of his body. He is_throbbing_ with the need that builds. His body is shaking even as he presses in for more. It feels so new, so raw, and he is overwhelmed with it.

Dean breaks away and instead brings his kisses to Cas's cheek. "You're trembling."

"I -" He has no answer, no retort that would be heard over the roar of blood in his ears. He drags in a loud breath and his gaze swings to the counter. "Dean, the bacon."

"Shit!" Dean pushes off him and runs to the stove, where the bacon is little more than crumbled, charred bits floating in a lake of grease. He turns off the flame and moves the skillet onto a back burner, flushed and laughing. "You know what? I can't even be bothered. Not hungry."

The look Dean turns on him is pure heat. Cas's heart jumps with a small thrill and he smiles. "I want you to remember this the next time you bring up the fire incident."

Grinning, Dean stalks over and crowds him against the counter. "Burnt bacon really doesn't compare to a grease fire. I'm never letting go of that one. Angel of the Lord, with all that vast knowledge, and you burn down the kitchen trying to make mac and cheese."

Cas reaches up and places his hands on either side of Dean's jaw, thumbing the upturned corners of his swollen mouth. The man is beautiful, inside and out, and that knowledge was gained personally. He knows. He held that soul in his until it could survive on its own, just as he holds Dean now. With love.

"Christ," Dean breathes, resting his forehead against Cas's own. "Sometimes you look at me like I'm not even real."

"Sometimes I can't believe my good fortune," he whispers back, tilting his head to brush a kiss across Dean's closed eyelids, wanting those eyes open so he can see them. "And then you start singing in the shower -"

"Shut up!" Dean interrupts loudly, laughing, pressing his smiling mouth to Cas's. "Like you know what constitutes good singing. You like_Elton_. You wouldn't know good music from a Coke machine if you got hit in the face with both of them."

He slings his arms loosely around Dean's hips and presses their noses together. "Remind me again who sang 'Your Song' when I was ill this past Spring and pretending to be asleep?"

The outraged mortification on Dean's face punches the laughter right out of him, and he continues laughing as Dean drags him by the arm out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. "Yep, and that's the game, folks. You're delusional. Absolutely batshit crazy. Time to quarantine your psycho ass, let's go."

They stumble into their bedroom, the old floorboards complaining under their feet, laughing and tangled up in each other while Dean pulls the Grateful Dead T-shirt from Cas's body, still announcing Cas's supposed psychosis to the entire world.

"What do you want?" Dean gasps, allowing himself to be pulled down onto the bed, the duvet twisted and mussed from the previous night and Cas's cocoon. Their hips rub, denim against jersey cotton, and Cas feels it as if it were his own skin, giving a stuttering groan. Dean chuckles and it sounds deliciously filthy, thrusting hard and slow against him, graceful, rolling motions that leave Cas gasping for air and gripping the duvet. "Yeah, let me hear you. You were wild last night, absolutely goddamn out of it. Like you were possessed. God, it was incredible. I'll be getting off to last night for the rest of my life, watching you lose it like that."

Cas arches back, rocking into Dean, and dimly hears his own breath leave him in staccato huffs. He is so many things in this bed, lying and moving with Dean; wet, leaking, sweat and ejaculate and saliva, and Dean takes all of it, the filth and fire and beauty of this. Dean's mouth devours him, teeth biting at skin and tongue bathing him as though he is something to cherish, to worship.

"Gorgeous, fuck, you're gorgeous," Dean grits out, slipping a hand into the loose sweatpants Cas wears, dragging the callused pads of his fingers over the thin, sensitive skin of his pelvis before dipping deeper.

The gasp that punches its way out of him when Dean curls a hand around him is a surprise, and he groans, breathless, as Dean's thumb fits right against the plume of his cock and rubs. He feels so wet under Dean's hand, can feel it leaking onto Dean's fingers, and he cannot stop from whining when it slides further down, dragging trails of him along his skin. The fingers part him and glide over the puckered skin there, setting him on fire from the inside.

"How sore are you from last night? Can you take me again?"

"Yes," he says, mouth dropping open at the spikes of pleasure wrought from Dean's ministrations. He is too open, too everywhere, vulnerable and hot, and it feels as though the entire world is watching. "Yes, always."

His skin shivers when the sweatpants are dragged down, discarded, and his legs rest on Dean's arms as he is taken apart with fingers and mouth and breath. He closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing as Dean touches him, slick and probing and stroking, lighting him up like the night sky over Abu Simbel, like the sun, like a nova, until all he feels is the shock of pleasure, open and hot, left panting.

"Look at you," Dean murmurs, but it sounds like the crash of waves, distant and beautiful and the best song the natural world has to offer. "Just look at you. God, look at you."

He reaches out with shaking arms and wraps them around Dean, dragging him down, needing something to anchor him before he is washed away. There is no barrier between them, not a stitch to separate them, and the fingers leave for a moment before Dean slides inside, seated deep and pulsing with heat and blood, slotted together as if they had been one body split into two, and were just now coming home again.

Each thrust is devastating, every drag against his insides like the twinkling lights on houses at Christmas time, every gasp from Dean heavy with intent. Through heavy-lidded eyes, half-mad with pleasure, Cas watches Dean watch him and simply feels the strike of sharp pleasure as it hits continuously, only closing his eyes when Dean leans down, slides in further, bending him in order to take his mouth.

In the one lucid moment he has before Dean strokes him in time to the piston of his hips and right over the edge, Cas thinks of his former brothers and sisters and pities them horribly. They will sing of peace and happiness and joy in the Kingdom of Heaven and never, ever understand it is all found here. Right here. He could stay here forever.

White explodes suddenly behind his eyes and obliterates every thought, all his awareness of the world, and he is made entirely of light and gossamer.

He comes back to the sensation of rough fingers dragging across his hypersensitive, swollen lips, and he darts his tongue out to taste them.

Dean groans appreciatively. "Do the two thousand-year old virgins up there know what an enormous slut you are for my cock?"

Smiling, he stretches out beneath Dean and twists his wrists until they pop. "I don't know… I am sure they have heard you begging for mine on the occasions they listen in. Gabriel has made recordings of it, no doubt."

"Dick," Dean murmurs fondly, running sticky fingers over Cas's bare stomach. He presses a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, slides out from Cas's body with great care, and drapes himself over him like he owns him. "I liked you better when you were totally clueless about everything."

"Liar."

They lie in a comfortable silence, Cas slowly walking his fingers up and down Dean's spine, feeling every vertebra, while Dean rumbles wordlessly into Cas's shoulder. The muscles tense suddenly under his touch and Dean lifts his head, the corners of his eyes crinkled not with laughter, but vague unease.

"Hey, so, I've been meaning to ask you something."

Cas waits for Dean to continue, but when nothing more is forthcoming, he ventures, "… Are you going to ask me?"

Dean snorts and hangs his head, dropping it onto Cas's chest. "It's… I'm trying to think of the best way to ask."

There is nothing Dean cannot ask of him, and he says as much, but his response is a sharp headshake. "Perhaps if you asked me after we return from Sam's?"

"Giving me a deadline?" But Dean is smiling again. "All right. After Sam's."

His curiosity has been piqued, and he wants to know just what it is Dean needs of him, but since becoming human he has learned the value of patience, especially where Dean is concerned. Rushing Dean into anything has only ever yielded disastrous results.

"Okay, get your lazy ass up," Dean says with a grin, pushing himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. "Shower, then Sam's. Let's go."

Cas pulls back on the hand that Dean has around his wrist. "You said you wanted to shower."

"I do," another playful tug, "but you gotta come with me. I might slip and fall and die, and then what? You can protect me."

"Oh, yes," Cas says, amused, letting himself be led out into the hall and into the bathroom. "The pitfalls of human hygiene."

The ride to Sam's is quiet if the playing of _The Lemon Song_ is not counted. Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel, singing along to the music under his breath. Cas had been lying when he teased Dean for his vocal ability; he has a very pleasant voice.

He rests his head against the window and watches the world pass them by, street after street after street flying past, allowing him only a glimpse of the large, looming Gate that punctuates each of them. Exhaling softly, he closes his eyes, smiling when a hand covers his knee and squeezes.

Sam lives the next state over in a big, gray house with white shutters, a large, weeping elm tree in his backyard his daughters are always climbing. Ever since bringing a halt to the Apocalypse, Sam has held an annual 'Bet Lucifer Didn't See _That_ One Coming' party, and all those who had a hand in putting Lucifer back into his cage attend. Cas is looking forward to seeing Bobby or, more specifically, Bobby's barbeque chicken wings.

Dean pulls the Impala into Sam's driveway and grins, pointing to where a little girl in a green dress is sitting on the front steps. She sees the car and jumps onto the walkway, cutting across the grass of the yard and running for them, brown hair flowing behind her. "Your girlfriend's here."

Cas cannot help but smile wide, getting out of the car just in time to catch her as she throws herself into his stomach. Getting his arms underneath to support her weight, he holds her up and presses their noses together. "My Olivia."

Olivia's mouth is smeared with blue and red and tastes of artificial sweetness when she presses a noisy kiss to his lips. "Momma bought popsicles! I'm not s'posed to have any before dinner, but Grandpa gave me some."

Bobby cannot deny Sam's girls anything. "You taste like…"

"Blue raspberry and strawberry!" She peaks over his shoulder and leans forward to wave enthusiastically. "Hi, Uncle Dean! Can I drive your car?"

Dean laughs hysterically and Cas turns to see him watching them, his arms crossed over the roof of the Impala. "Sorry, kiddo, but you're a princess, and princesses don't drive cars."

"I'm not a princess," Olivia says patiently, as if she is explaining things to a particularly slow child. "I'm a dinosaur. I'm a T-rex! Look!"

He cranes his neck to see the arm she proudly displays, which is covered in wrinkled images of Tyrannosaurs. There is no reason why the sight of them should make him uneasy, but his heart gives a hard thud. Olivia settles back and is fully seated on his arm. She reaches up with sticky hands and buries them into his hair. "It's messy."

"It's always messy," Cas reminds her, wincing as she detangles her fingers from him, tearing a few strands out as she does. "And where is Mary?"

Olivia rolls her eyes. "She brought a booooy today."

Dean chokes. "A what? Who?"

"I don't know, someone she knows from school." Olivia shimmies out of Cas's hold and fixes the frills on her dress - a dress that has a pointed tail attached to the back. "He's got a big nose and Daddy's gonna bury him under the tree later on tonight."

"Really?" Dean tries to sound as if the idea does not interest him and fails. "Says who?"

"Daddy. Momma told him he can't," Olivia says, then lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "But he took out the shovels and the plastic stuff anyway."

There is a chortle from Dean, who comes around to take Olivia from Cas's arms, but she throws her own around Cas's hips and glares. Dean backs off, hands raised, and laughs. "Right, forgot. My own niece, abandoning me for some creep with electroshock hair."

"Uncle Cas is my favorite," she says emphatically. "He reads _The Witches_ and takes me to the museum and buys me and Mary ice cream and lets me stay up to watch meteor showers."

Dean stares at him. "Oh my God, you goddamn hippie."

Olivia slips her little hand into his and pulls him toward the sounds of music and laughter, Dean following sedately behind carrying two packs of beer. When they enter the yard, they are met with cheerful greetings, hugs and backslaps, as if they were the celebrities Mary had photos of on her walls.

"There you are!" Sam calls, waving a bottle of beer at them from the deck. "I thought you guys got lost."

"Nope," Dean says with a lascivious grin, putting down his cargo to go hug his brother.

Sam pulls away, laughing. "Gross. Hey, I see Liv found you. She's been waiting all day."

"Hello, Sam." He smiles at him, accepts Sam's hug, and feels a wash of familial love over his insides, the likes of which he never felt for his own brethren. For a moment it is like the days when the three of them traveled together, gathering allies and forces, working side-by-side to end what Heaven started.

Olivia tugs on his hand and then points out into the yard. "Uncle Cas, there he is! Mary's booooyfriend."

Sam growls under his breath and Dean echoes it.

"So, where is the little punk?" Dean inquires, resting his hand on Olivia's head as he scans the backyard. She points to where Mary and a blond boy are sitting on the old swing set, talking and laughing. The boy seems nice enough, dressed in a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt.

Cas hums. "He seems harmless -"

The boy reaches over and takes Mary's hand.

" - and I am quite sure my brother Balthazar owes me a favor," he finishes, because this boy obviously cannot be trusted. "He can be discreet."

"You idjits plotting murder?"

Dean turns, the frown on his face turning up, and he clasps Bobby on the shoulder tightly. "Hey, old man. How you holding up?"

"I'd be better if I didn't have to worry about posting bail," Bobby says, amused, and he nods at Cas. "Feathers, you look like you just got fu -"

"- and that would be my seven-year old kid standing right there," Sam cuts in loudly.

Olivia frowns and shakes her head. "No, daddy, I'm eight!"

"Not quite there yet, baby."

"Close enough, sweetheart," Bobby says, eyes soft, and Olivia beams up at him. Dean mimes using a whip and then pops a tab on his can of beer.

Tugging on his hand, Olivia pulls Cas down until he is bent at the waist. "I want to get up on your shoulders, Uncle Cas."

Bobby is the one to lift her up, and she wiggles around, her legs squeezing his neck until she is settled. He reaches up and holds her shins with his hands, securing her, because he would never forgive himself if he let her fall. She is a precious thing, more so than the other children he saw in the park after Dean and Sam stopped the Samhain ritual. She is beauty and innocence incarnate, both her and Mary, and he would kill for them without a thought.

"Uncle Cas, let's go to the tree!"

Smiling and accepting Dean's wink, Cas carefully walks down the stairs and into the yard, stopping every time Olivia wants to talk to someone. He recognizes a few people, some hunters he teamed with during the last legs of the Apocalypse before they ended things in Detroit, and he acknowledges them with a wave or small talk, learning of new happenings in their lives since the last cookout. Wanda Miller, the expert in aerodynamic weaponry, is pregnant, and her husband - a hunter - stands proudly and protectively at her side. Cas bends at the knees and obligingly leans forward so Olivia can touch Wanda's protruding belly.

They continue on their slow trek through the yard, stopping once more so Olivia can hug Lenore, the vampire who allied with them early on. Her coven had been most useful, and their "vegetarianism" did not hurt trust relations with the hunters. She smiles at him, touches Olivia's cheek, then departs to greet a group of women warmly.

"Hi, momma!" Olivia shouts, waving, and Cas turns his head to see the woman waving from where she stands next to Sam on the deck. She has no face, but he sees her dark hair, and lifts his hand in greeting.

By the time they have spoken to everyone they wish to speak to, the day is coming to an end and the sky is pink and purple.

"Uncle Cas, I'm hungry."

"I thought you wanted to go to the tree."

Olivia rests her chin on his head. "Yeah, but I'm hungry, and grandpa said he'd make me a hotdog. We could get food and then go to the tree?"

He tilts his head back to look into her eyes. She giggles at him. "Perhaps we ought to ask if Mary and her friend would like food."

"Mary can get her _own_ food," Olivia says. "She wouldn't come out of the bathroom today and I really had to _go_ and I kept knocking on the door but she wouldn't let me in! I don't know why she's going so crazy. He's just a boy. Boys are gross. I don't ever want a boyfriend."

And won't all the father figures in her life be glad to hear it. "Olivia, you are a very wise girl."

They end up taking their food - Olivia's hotdog and his plate of Bobby's barbeque chicken - and sit under the elm tree, sheltered in its weeping branches, which are in the process of finishing their color change, the bright yellow fading. Olivia cuddles close as the air becomes cooler, slipping into night. She tells him about her current favorite dinosaur, the plesiosaur, which lived in the water and swam slowly and some of them looked like Giraffatitan and did he know there is a plesiosaur in a Scottish lake? Cas curls his arm around her and tells her of the creatures in Loch Ness, how they evolved from her favorite dinosaur into something new, something magnificent. He whispers into her hair, which smells of autumn and bubblegum shampoo, that these creatures sing to each other, and the lake is never still.

She listens and asks many questions, which he gladly answers, and finds himself seeking out Dean among the hunters and creatures they have fought alongside, just to keep track. Just to make sure. It is a habit of which he will never be broken.

"Uncle Cas!" Olivia exclaims suddenly, in a whisper, her eyes wide and shining. "Look!"

Weaving in between the leaves of the elm are balls of light, their bodies glowing brightly as their gossamer wings beat soundlessly. Olivia reaches out and one of them drifts into her palm, hovering, faintly buzzing, and she blows it away like a dandelion clock. It rocks upwards, ascending slowly, as more drift down, lighting their world beneath the tree.

Olivia sighs and burrows her face into his chest, then sits up with a bright smile as she gets her second wind. "Uncle Cas, can I show you something?"

He winces as she squirms so that she is sitting on his outstretched legs, facing him, and she holds up her palms to him, making a face until he does the same.

"We learned a song at school! When I hit your hand, you hit my other one, and it's a pattern! Ready?"

There are no words to describe his confusion. Children are such confounding creatures.

"Three little angels all dressed in white  
>Try'n to get to Heaven on the end of a kite<br>But the kite string broke and down they all fell  
>Instead of going to Heaven, they all went to -<p>

"Two little angels all dressed in white  
>Try'n to get to Heaven on the end of a kite<br>But the kite string broke and down they all fell  
>Instead of going to Heaven, they all went to -<p>

"One little angel all dressed in blue  
>Try'n to figure out where his human got to<br>But the ground rose up, from which two were born  
>One was made of ivory, the other made of -"<p>

A hand parts the curtain of leaves and Dean pokes his head in. "Hey. Sorry to interrupt, but I think it's time we start heading back."

"But Uncle _Dean_ -"

"I will come by this week and take you and Mary out for hot cider," Cas promises as they crawl out from behind the branches. "Come, my Olivia, so we can say our goodbyes."

Dean takes the long way home, weaving the Impala expertly down winding back roads, the radio playing on low. Cas is slumped comfortably in his seat, tired from good company and Bobby's special barbeque, from Olivia's weight on his shoulders. He does not know how Sam and his wife can raise two of them; children are such beautiful but exhausting things.

On a stretch of dark road, Dean rolls the Impala to a slow stop, puts it into park, and shuts it off.

"Dean?"

Dean opens the door wordlessly and gets out of the car, and Cas scrambles to follow, suddenly inexplicably worried. This is such odd behavior. The conversation from the morning surfaces and he has to wonder if Dean will finally ask him whatever it is that troubles him.

He moves around the front of the Impala, a bit surprised when Dean meets him there and pulls him into a swift, devouring kiss.

"D-Dean, stop." He breaks away and places a hand on Dean's chest, stilling him. "What is this, Dean? Why are you -"

"I couldn't think of a fancy way of doing this. I'm a Winchester; we don't do fancy. And you know me: I'm a firm believer in just throwing it all out there, so…" Dean reaches into his jacket pocket and withdraws a small box.

All his breath leaves him in a single exhale and his heart pounds a steel fist against his ribs. "Dean…"

"I never thought we'd live to see the day after the big showdown, let alone have an actual life. Christ, Sammy's a dad and I'm a homeowner… and you've got the rest of your days to do whatever you want now. I know you've been through the wringer - hell, we all have - but that doesn't mean I've got a right to keep you here if you don't -"

"Dean -"

"I'm shit at words, you know that. This was never gonna be anything out of the movies, but it's all I've got." Dean opens the box, spilling light between them, and the ball of light resting on the velvet inside unfurls its wings lazily. "Stay. I want you to stay with me, Castiel. Forever."

Had Dean never done anything like this, it never would have crossed his mind, but that the gesture was made… it is something solid, concrete, tangible.

Grinning so hard his cheeks strain, he reaches out for it, laughing wetly when Dean presses their temples together, and then the words catch up with him. He freezes. His hand stops.

"What… What did you just call me?"

Dean blinks, glances down at the parcel in his hands, and then gives him a confused look. "I called you by your name. Hey, don't leave me hanging here. Is… is this a yes or no?"

The burning in his eyes is unexpected, as is the blurring of his vision, and the sudden heavy feeling in his gut feels as though he swallowed a lead weight. He takes a step closer to Dean and curls his hand over the lid of the box, bringing it down and sealing in the light, throwing them into complete darkness, leaving them to the mercy of the night and this small misstep.

He presses his nose to Dean's jaw and closes his eyes, allowing himself one last moment. "My answer would have been yes."

Gentle hands come up, fingers calloused from years of handling weapons and hardship, to cup his jaw, to tilt his face up. "Would have b -"

"Dean Winchester only calls me 'Castiel' in my dreams."

Dean stiffens, and Cas steps back.

"This is a dream. I am dreaming."

The world fills up with golden light, coming like a fire, like a wave, a dissolution. He forces himself to watch Dean crumble like ash and blow away into nothing, to watch as it takes the Impala, the street, starry sky, ripping it away until he is standing on a very familiar hill in a field of burnished gold.

He closes his eyes and tries to conquer the suddenly impossible task of breathing.

"I am dreaming."


	9. Eight

**Eight.****  
><strong>**"I dreamed a thousand new paths... I woke and walked my old one."**

There is a gentle wind that sets the tall, gilded grass into motion, and as one they ripple like water, glinting sharply with sunlight that is everywhere. It makes a sound not unlike what comes of shifting a body across messy bed sheets, and he breathes in, shaky, shaking with fury and the greatest sorrow he has ever known.

It had been his. His dream, his favorite, and it had been his. He now knows what happens after Dean makes him laugh in the kitchen. He had a family, one that loved him, showed it in popsicle kisses and celebrations and story-telling, in burnt bacon and world-destroying sex. It had all been his to have and he never would have known it to be false, would have accepted it as reality and been happy, if not for that one little slip-up.

He coughs once, and his chest feels as if something is breaking inside, but he shoves it all down, forces it somewhere where he cannot look at it, where he cannot feel a little girl who does not exist, or Dean's fingers brushing over his mouth, and waits until the feeling passes. He has a job to do. Once it is done, he can go to Jodhpur and sit miles above the Blue City, and examine each shard of the dream until he can sink into it and make it real.

Wiping at his eyes, he stands at the edge of the hill and shouts, "_Sam!_"

There is no answer, so he calls again, hoping against hope Sam is somewhere here and has not been taken or killed. No answer.

Something sounds behind him, like the gears of a clock clicking together, and he turns, exhaling sharply at the great, weeping elm that stands behind him. Its branches are heavy with its winged fruit, which form and detach, drifting away slowly.

Rage fills him, sudden and painful, and he snatches one of those things from the air, oddly solid in his hand, and drops to his knees to smash it against the hill. It explodes and disperses like smoke, and he is up, reaching for the branches and pulling the fruit off by the handful, slamming them into the trunk of the tree.

"You took them! You took them from me!" He shouts, grabbing more and more, anything within reach, and destroying them against the tree. "Let me return the favor! Let me pay you in kind!"

He wants to kill this tree, salt the soil so nothing will ever grow there again, but he settles for ripping the leaves from their stems and breaking the branches, twisting them beyond repair, tearing the bark from the trunk, relishing the splinters and bleeding cuts on his hands from the systematic destruction of this monster. It needs to die. It needs to burn.

There is a moment where the entire golden world inhales as if waiting for something, and then there is a lighter in his hand, Dean's lighter, the silver of it scratched from use, and he flicks the flint wheel to ignite the flame. It dances, sputters once in the breeze, but burns with purpose as he brings it down to flicker against one of the mottled branches.

A great crash sounds behind him and he snaps the lid down over the flame, pocketing it as he turns, and from the grass rises a great stone structure that stretches grandly into the sky. When it finally stops, it is burnished by the sunlight, a magnificent and terrible thing with faces etched into it, images of horror and the macabre, animals being chased by man, the pantheons of a million religions, languages long lost and ones that have yet to be. He sees a carving of angels, of the world, and lets his eyes roam to the sculpture that sits at the very top of the structure, the winged creature that started all of this.

The Gate of Horn is everything he supposed it would be, and more.

Exhaling, allowing all of the rage and hatred to flow out of him, he starts down the hill toward the Gate. The grass is soft where it brushes against his hands, and he walks faster and faster until he is running for it.

He hits the bottom of the hill and stumbles for the entrance, his fingers reaching out and just brushing the stone, and there is nothing there. He skids to a stop, squinting through the overly bright grass, and finds the gate has moved yards and yards away, silhouetted by shadow and the sunlight.

Panting, he stares for a long moment, unsure of how to proceed. There is nothing for it. He waits until his breathing is under control, then starts for it once more, pushing a path through the tall grass, stumbling on broken clumps of weeds and rocks. He comes up on the gate, so very close, and then it is gone, pushed back some distance away as if it has always been where it stands.

He looks around, runs a shaking hand through his hair, and wonders at this game. What is the point? Perhaps it is a simple way to drive him slowly insane, dangling it in front of him, only to snatch it away. It's so very unfair. How much more must he endure before it is enough?

There is movement by the gate, a tall silhouette that lifts an arm and waves at him. Sam. It's Sam.

"Sam!" He calls out, voice echoing across the field, and he kicks himself into motion, the ground hard and unforgiving under Jimmy Novak's - his - impractical shoes. He runs as fast as he can as the grass gets thicker, as he loses sight of Sam, tripping once over a protruding dirt clod, and breaks free of his golden maze.

Except Sam is not there, and neither is the Gate. It's further back. Alone.

"Sam!" He spins in a circle, scanning the field, squinting against the brightness and hoping against all hope that he will see _something_. But there is nothing. "_Sam_!"

Nothing. The Gate stands quietly away from him, taunting without words.

He hangs his head and inhales through his nose, shoulders set. Dean and Sam are just through that portal, and he will pass through it, even if it means he must walk forever to do it.

Years sluice from the world as he walks, his feet aching, his legs cramping, but he pushes on until he is beyond thirst, beyond sleep, beyond his own mind, walking because there is nothing else. The field stretches on for miles, for decades, never changing, still as beautiful and golden as it had been when he first sat on the hill in a dream.

His shoes have long since worn away, his bare feet scraping against the ground, probably bloody, probably infected, and his lips crack with envy for a drink of water. His clothes have rotted and left him. There is hardly a stitch or thought that holds him together. His skin is all but gone.

By the turn of eternity, his knees buckle and send him to the ground hard, and he cannot get back up. The gate stands away from him, an impossible goal, but there is no drive left in him. He closes his eyes and breathes out.

"Please." He does not recognize his voice, rough from disuse. But it is him. "This is enough. Morpheus, enough."

Someone whispers his name into his ear, or perhaps it is the wind, and when he opens his eyes it is the stone base of the gate his gaze falls upon. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, his arms clothed once more in Jimmy Novak's suit and coat, his body as it was, the fragments of his mind sealed together.

He gets to his feet and stares at the gate, and the faces contorted in horror stare back at him, their mouths open in silent screams, eyes begging for absolution. Hesitantly, he reaches out, inching his hand closer to it, so afraid it will pull away from him, but his fingers touch solid stone.

It is an invitation. A concession. Or Morpheus has finally finished toying with him.

It does not matter what it is. He pushes away from the field and passes through, the golden grass turning solid beneath his feet. The golden field is gone, replaced by an impossibly enormous, cavernous space, a place born from the dreams of children and nothing the human mind could ever dream. He has never seen anything like it, not even in the depths of Hell where Alistair attempted to keep Dean from Heaven's reach, and that lair was the most terrifying place to which he had ever borne witness. This is different; it is less harsh and more… He does not know the word. It makes his skin feel as though it is crawling off of his bones, and the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand to attention.

The waterfall is the first thing he notices, as it is right in front of his feet, rushing through broken brick and moss, overgrown plants that have taken possession of the place this once was, water pooling in small, knolled inlets before continuing on. Walls, brick and stone and ivy, curve upward, their pattern stopped only by large, gothic windows that show nothing except gnarled trees and odd fauna, steel girders exposed by time and the pitfalls of human architecture. A large tree branch stretches up through the open sections between the steel, disappearing from sight.

This once was a place where care was taken in building it. Or that is the illusion. He looks beyond the waterfall and the trees, the eroded brick and mortar, to the grand staircase mostly covered by moss, framed by grand stone railings that have been overrun by dark flowers. The steps lead to a large platform backed by the broken façade of a basilica illuminated by golden light from an unseen source.

It is beautiful. Devastating. Unreal. Too real. And it all falls away when he sees who is at the top of the staircase.

He wants to run to them, jump over water, rock and root, but it could be a trick. A trap. Quelling the urge to call out to them across the distance, Cas walks toward them slowly, waiting for something to befall him, something that will prevent him from getting there. Nothing happens.

"Cas? Cas!" Dean is slouching, kneeling at the top step, but he straightens and the expression on his face spells relief. Cas is staggered by his own relief. Dean is unharmed, as far as he can see, unmarked, and not a little angry. "Jesus, man, you're a sight for sore eyes."

His heart stutters and he bites down on the urge to rush up the stairs and wrap Dean in his arms. Instead, he exhales and looks from Dean to Sam, who looks equally unscathed. "Dean. Sam. Are you hurt?"

"No, no, we're good," Sam says with a shake of his head. He grins. "You look like shit."

The words are spoken with gravity despite Sam's grin, and he shakes his head at Sam's unspoken question. "I have walked a very long way. I'm glad to see you both." If his eyes flick to Dean more than once, Sam says nothing of it.

"He's right," Dean says, shifting on his knees with a wince, oddly making no move to rise. "You look awful."

He wants to tell Dean everything. All that has happened since Gabriel came and found a winged creature in his throat. The loss of his Grace. Learning of God and Morpheus's roles in existence. The venture into Demos Oneiroi. The dreams. The nightmares. The memory. The fantasy. The field. There is so much he wants to say, but before all that, he wants to explain his whereabouts in Carthage.

Instead, he says, "It has been… interesting. Come down from there. We are leaving this place."

"Wish we could," Dean snorts, then his face suddenly colors and his neck strains. After a moment, he slumps back with a scowl. "We're kind of stuck. I've been like this for_ever_. Sam's been here for, like, ten minutes and he's been_whining_about his knees the entire time. Such a wimp."

"Oh my god, would you _shut up_," Sam groans, glaring at his brother. "You have no idea what we went through coming after your ungrateful ass. You have no clue what _Cas_has gone through."

A frown mars Dean's face and he looks down the staircase. "Cas?"

He opens his mouth to give an answer he does not have when something moves from the corner of his eye. Lifting his head to the ceiling, he starts in surprise. Hovering like tiny suns are thousands of the creatures that have pervaded this entire journey, all of them floating, buzzing faintly, and he realizes they are the source of light upon the platform.

Swallowing, he shakes his head and hurries up the stairs, dropping to his knees beside Dean. He doesn't know where to put his hands, where the bindings are. "Is it a spell? What do I have to do?"

"I don't know," Sam says

"Finally."

The voice echoes like a gunshot across the entire room, and he turns his attention to the top stair where Dean and Sam kneel. There is a man in grand, gold-trimmed robes emerging from the entrance to the ruined basilica, his steps graceful and almost a glide. Cas cannot recognize him, does not know any of the faces the man wears as they shift with every step he takes, men, women, children, creatures the Winchesters have faced, beasts found only in Hell, faces of the different choirs of angels, faces unlike anything he has ever dreamed.

Cas takes a step back, an involuntary reaction, and flinches back from the sheer power the man exudes as he passes by Dean and Sam to descend the stairs. Halfway down, the man's face shifts one last time before settling on the one face Cas has fought through an entire realm to see, and the sight of it on that body - beautiful though it is - makes him ill.

"You have come," the man wearing Dean's face says warmly, in Dean's voice, and Cas's stomach drops at the sound of it.

"Hey!" The real Dean is outraged from where he kneels, his face contorted with confusion and disgust. "That's fucking copyright infringement!"

The man turns his head slowly to look back at the stairs, and whatever is on his face is enough to silence Dean. He turns back with a smile, his robes shifting as if untied to gravity. The robes bleed from grey to a stark white.

Cas looks away. "Remove that face. It does not belong to you."

"Oh? I thought you would enjoy this."

"_Remove it._"

"Does it bother you so much? Very well." When Cas looks up, it is another face that he finds, one he does not know. Impossibly beautiful. He cannot look for very long, as his eyes burn after a few moments and a thin reed of pain stabs him at the base of his skull.

He averts his eyes once more, but a gentle hand cups his jaw, thumb lightly brushing over his eyes.

"Hands off, launch pad!" Dean shouts from somewhere far away. "Don't you fucking touch him!"

Cas can barely hear him over the silence that has descended at this soft, slight touch. He is calm, calmer than perhaps he has ever been, and the air in his lungs leaves him in a soft whoosh. The way he is touched, the way the thumb slides over his skin, drags a shudder from deep inside that expels itself in a gasp.

"The angel who dreams," Morpheus says softly, but in the quiet of Cas's mind it rings out like thunder. "Of all I have brought into being, never once did I expect you; the greatest triumph of my greatest failure. he knew not what he wrought in the heaven I gave him, making you, or else he would not have placed any of his squabbling vermin above you."

Cas sucks in a breath as the hand on his cheek shifts and the thumb brushes over his lips, a gesture so familiar in the way he has never known it outside of his mind. He jerks his head away. "You will let Dean and Sam Winchester go."

Morpheus smiles, and it is unholy in its perfection. "Of course."

It cannot be so easy. Not after everything he and Sam endured in order to find this place. "You let Dean Winchester go without a fight?"

"I do not care about Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester is nothing to me. Less than nothing. But he is not so to you. He is more than everything to you." The way Morpheus says it, the way his eyes soften with amusement, does not sit right with Cas, and he struggles to understand the importance of this gesture. In bringing Dean here, Morpheus called a halt to the Apocalypse, but Morpheus could have stopped it at anytime without going to such lengths. Then why take a mortal man who means nothing to him at all?

_He is more than everything__**to you**_.

The realization burns hot.

"I have watched you for so long, before your beloved father assigned Time to the kingdom I made for him." Morpheus tilts his head and regards Cas. "A miracle among the muck and none saw it, none but I. A dreamer, sympathetic to even the lowest creatures -" a glance at Sam and Dean, " - and possessing a mind untethered to the hive. Your attachment to this… human was, yes, unexpected, but proved useful. You would not have come of your own choice otherwise."

Cas's hands move before he can even catch the intent, his reflexes still lightning-fast, a blade in his grasp that swipes at Morpheus's throat. Before the metal edge strikes it is turned into light, and Cas has no weapon to protect himself. His attack failed, and Morpheus only hums in appreciation.

"Jesus," Sam says behind them.

Morpheus smiles widely, his teeth glinting, and he laughs, eyes only on Cas as if there is nothing else at which he would rather look. "You manipulate what only I have allowed myself. I trapped you in your darkest memory and you were able to break my thrall with the smallest twitch of intention, and the act in which you did was beautiful. You use my realm as if it were your own. You, Castiel, were made for me."

Cas steps back despite the fact that Morpheus does not seem angry about the attempt at murder. His teeth grind as he locks his jaw and forces himself to look Morpheus in the eye. How odd, that given the opportunity to stand before his Father in this way, he would never be so bold as this. Morpheus, dreamer and creator of worlds, does not affect him. He feels nothing.

"Perhaps your father knew this and made you as tribute. Perhaps it was a happy accident. It matters not how you came to be; it only matters that you stay. We will dream magnificent things together," Morpheus says with a nod. "You will fear nothing, no one, and none will dare rebuke you for your will. There will be no disobedience. It will be your realm to command as much as it is mine, seated beside me on a throne cultivated by the collective mind of the millions and millions of universes I have wrought."

"I have no need for this kind of power," Cas says firmly, stepping back, away from him, as far as he can without being disrespectful. He has no desire to encourage the wrath of Morpheus. "And you speak of my having free will while deciding my fate for me in the same breath. I'm not staying here. I'm taking these boys back to the mortal realm to fight a war you allow to continue."

The face Morpheus wears, whether it is a man who does exist or one he dreamed up, distorts for a moment into something that does not resemble a face at all, but a storm cloud, a tornado, an eruption in the heart of Olympus Mons, something wild and frightening. This is a glimpse of what lies beneath that handsome, glowing façade, a look at the true face of the oldest living thing.

Morpheus's face settles, its eyes - like dreaming seas - kind, but firm. Absolute. "You wish for incentive? It will pain me none to keep your Dean Winchester here, to lock him in a Hell of his own memory and doing, and remove all opportunity for mercy until I dream the end of all things. I can read his time spent in your father's fire pit, and it pollutes him; I should not think he would like to relive it."

Dean gasps and straightens, struggling against his invisible bonds. "Hey, fuck you, sandals! You don't get to decide that shit!"

"Shut up, Dean," Sam hisses, eyes curiously red-rimmed. "You don't have leverage here."

"There's no way Heaven's gonna let Michael's prom dress sit on the rack," Dean snaps.

"You really think Heaven's our biggest problem right now? Have you been listening _at all_? Do you know who that guy is?"

"Christ, Sam, what happened while I was gone?"

So many answers to that, so much that needs to be said, explained.

"You had no qualms about forcing me to relive my own Hell," Cas sneers at Morpheus, a phantom pain in his spine bursting once before disappearing altogether.

"A tainted memory," Morpheus concedes, dipping his head, "but a necessary measure. You brought an end to it yourself. You could bring an end to _all_of this business with Heaven. Dream a cage for the corrupted angel with impenetrable walls and lock it away in a star. Stay, and I will end your wars - all of them. I will reopen your gates and usher in all the souls that were locked out, or create a new paradise as a reward, separate from heaven, more vast and glorious than you can possibly imagine. There is nothing I cannot not do. Will not do. If you stay."

"Cas! Cas, don't listen to that asshole! This isn't his fight, this is ours! Fuck him and his pretty little gifts! We don't need him! We'll figure out another way!" Dean shouts, gritting his teeth and fighting the weight that holds him down.

Cas turns, unable to ignore that voice when it calls him, and feels his heart constrict at the pain in those green eyes, the lines on that face that speak of hardship and perpetual disappointment, exhaustion and shadow swathing Dean, smothering him. The life he was born into has been a series of unfortunate events, with the Apocalypse just another unfair weight Dean must carry.

Humans were not meant for such suffering. Dean and Sam both deserve so much more than the fates handed to them. Sam deserves to own a house, to have a wife and children and not worry for their safety. Dean should be free to be who he wants, do what he wants, without the constant fear of failure hanging over his head.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Olivia, for whom the world held every wonder.

Sam shakes his head, eyes full, and Dean looks shocked at whatever he finds on Cas's face.

_You are worth it._

"Cas, no -" Sam jerks forward.

"Conditions," Cas whispers, turning away, and feels reality settling coldly in his chest like the densest ice, like stone, and yet his head is curiously light, feeling as if it will depart his neck and float away. "I have conditions."

"Cas, _no_! No, fucking - Don't you dare!" Dean screams, audibly struggling against his invisible bonds, while Sam remains curiously silent. Sam understands the necessity in this. Sam is his friend and will not stop him from doing the right thing, even when sometimes the right thing and the hardest thing are the same.

Morpheus inclines his head gracefully. "Of course."

He must gather his thoughts, put them in order, lock down on the scream that prowls around like an angry animal in his lungs, or else he will not make it through this and everything will have been for naught. Morpheus has appeared to them as a benevolent god, but Cas does not wish to test it.

What will his brothers and sisters in Heaven say when they learn of this? Or will they even know of it? God's children have never been open to anything that might contradict what was instilled in them since their inception. The truth of Morpheus's role in the universe - the many universes to which Heaven is blind - will no doubt never reach them. They will go through life worshipping and exalting a false deity, created by the one true maker who considers God a great failure.

It does not matter what his brothers and sisters know. He will not see them again.

"After you release the Winchesters from this realm and return them to their own, you will stop the Apocalypse," Cas says firmly, because there will be no dispute on this. This is the first and foremost. "You will do whatever you must to ensure Lucifer will never again rise. You will prevent Heaven from interfering with Humanity, but you will reopen the gates so that those who have died may rest in the fields of their Lord. They have earned such rights."

Morpheus smiles and nods. "I agree to these terms."

"I don't!" Dean's voice rings out. "Keep me here! If I'm here, there's no Apocalypse! Can't have half an Armageddon, right? Let Sam and Cas go, and I'll stay."

The words bring amusement to Morpheus's face and he tilts his chin up to show it. Cas swallows, then inhales deeply, so unexpectedly angry and tired, and for the first time he can remember Cas does not want to hear Dean speak.

"Dean, I don't need you to -"

"Fuck you, Cas! I don't need you to make these kinds of decisions for -"

"And I don't need you to belittle me for the choices I make!"

Something hard and cold, forged of stone, shell, and seawater, cracks inside him, and he whirls around, breaking his eye contact with Morpheus - turning his _back_on him - and spits his rage, his exhaustion, his frustration, until he feels the words burning his throat.

"I rebelled for this! For _you_! I died for _you_! I gave up all that I am so that I could come here to find _you_!" His eyes sting and his vision blurs, but he presses on, unable to stop. "Everything I have done has been for _you_, Dean, the way all you do is in service of Sam. You love Sam enough to take his place in Hell, and I love you that I will stay here so you may go home."

Dean stares.

"So… shut up." He drags in a shuddering breath. "I can do this. I may not have been able to save Ellen and Jo Harvelle, but I can do this much. And even as I am now, as diminished and human as I've become, I still have power enough to do this for you."

The gut-punched look on Dean's face sobers Cas slightly, but he does not look away, forces himself to hold Dean's gaze until something else cracks. It is Dean who shakes his head, teeth clenched but still trying to draw air through them, his breathing loud in this broken palace.

"Cas," Dean gasps out, breath punctuating the name. "You lo - I can't. I can't let you -"

Morpheus frowns up at the top stair and lifts a hand, index and middle fingers twitching, and whatever Dean is about to say is cut off. Cas looks up, terrified something may have happened, that Morpheus simply grew tired and rid himself of Dean, but Dean is still there. Still struggling, still shouting, but no sound comes out. Effectively silenced.

He turns away, leaving Dean to his crisis, and fixes his eyes once more on the apex of this journey. Morpheus smiles and reaches out once more, brushing a gentle thumb across the soft swell of Cas's cheek.

"Castiel -"

"I am not finished. The Winchesters will be accepted into the Kingdom when their time on Earth is finished, no matter the deeds they have done."

"I do not hold the same rigid values of your Heaven," Morpheus says, his tone indicative of his feelings on the subject. "There is no 'right' or 'wrong'; I did not dream up such restrictions. The Winchesters may go wherever they want, if this is your wish. I agree to these terms."

Cas steels his shoulders and exhales sharply, lifting his chin and dislodging Morpheus's hand. "I am not finished."

Morpheus looks intrigued. "Oh? More stipulations? I am infinitely generous, my angel. There is nothing I -"

"You will allow me to return with the Winchesters." He holds up a hand to forestall the protest that swirls on Morpheus's changing face. "For as long as they remain on Earth. When their time has ended and they are accepted into Heaven… then I will come to you."

"_Cas!_" Dean's voice bellows across the space, over the walls of Morpheus's silence, echoing fiercely over the stones and broken steel girders, much in the same way as his cries of terror when Castiel lifted him from Hell. He had struggled against the angel's hold, pleading for others to be taken in his place, screamed that he was not worthy enough to be saved. That was when the angel Castiel looked at the broken, tattered soul in his arms and saw not the Righteous Man, but Dean Winchester, and knew he would never know another like him.

"Dean, stop it," Sam shouts, the words breaking. "You have no idea -"

"I am Fallen, Dean," Cas interrupts Sam, unable to find any sort of victory at the misery in Dean's eyes, when the gravity of the sacrifices made in Dean's name are finally realized. "I cannot go back to Heaven. By staying, Morpheus will spare me Hell."

Morpheus gives him a long, searching look, eyes shifting color and shape, the irises blue, green, brown, black, white, smoke, thunder, chaos. For the first time since Morpheus's grand arrival, Cas feels as though he really is making demands of the dreamer of worlds. His heart thuds in his chest, each one like a punch, beating _runrunrunrunrun_into his ribs. He does not run. There is nowhere he could go that Morpheus could not follow.

Finally, Morpheus's lips twitch with amusement and his eyes settle to a warm amber. "I agree to all terms."

For a moment in time, he is Castiel and he has just taken a vessel, a man named James Novak who so earnestly wants to serve his Lord. He goes to a barn where he has been summoned, opens the doors and walks inside, the bulbs in the metal light fixtures exploding, the walls covered in sigils meant for demons. There are two men brandishing weapons, and they fire upon him. He does not feel it. He places his fingers upon the second human man and wills him into slumber before finally, _finally_turning to face the one he has come back to see. Through Hell and rock and ruin they have come, and now they are reunited.

And then he is simply Cas. He has come such a long way from that evening in Pontiac, Illinois. There are days when he cannot fathom that it actually happened. There are days when it feels as though it has all been a dream.

"Cas." Dean stares at him, eyes wet, wide, and Cas cannot name a single regret in having known this man.

His feet leave the ground in a way that he has missed, a slow rise as if he were allowing himself the luxury of putting his wings at the mercy of thermal pockets, and one of the winged creatures drifts down from the ceiling and begins a slow orbit around him. Another descends and takes a different path around him. Another, and another, and another, his entire world a vortex of stars, revolving faster and faster, spinning him until he collides with sound and everything bleeds to white.

* * *

><p><em>Wake up.<em>

* * *

><p>The floor is hard beneath his cheek. He opens his eyes, catching sight of a box labeled "Wonder Bread", and winces at the sore muscles in his back. Breathing out, he rolls over and pushes himself up. The backroom of Iris's diner looks the same as it did when he first entered; not much time has passed, then. He lived an eternity a dozen times over, and it is only just now the evening.<p>

"So."

Cas turns his head and finds Iris leaning in the doorway, the bustle of customers faint behind her, the clink of forks against plates, of laughter and gossip. He does not know what to say to her, and so says nothing. She accepts it with a bitter nod and turns her back on him to go take dinner orders.

"Ah, crap," Gabriel sighs, pushing away from the wall where he had been standing. There is a moment where Cas thinks Gabriel will extinguish him like an insect, but perhaps that is simply the instinctual feeling a human has when faced with an angel, because Gabriel does nothing except place his hands on Cas's shoulders and squeeze.

"It's… stopped," Cas says slowly, and it is a question and a nameless fear both.

Releasing him, Gabriel takes a step back, then another, and purses his lips around a smile.

Cas sighs heavily and runs his palms over the tan coat that once belonged to Jimmy, and thinks it may be time to find some new clothes. He does not like what he wears now. Perhaps he will find a Grateful Dead T-shirt and wash it until it is soft and thin enough for his tastes.

"Cas?"

Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood, the best friend of an ex-angel, who has spent his entire life in the search for peace. He turns to where Sam stands, eyes heavy and wet, in between boxes of what look to be ice cream toppings, and knows even if God is not the true creator of the universe, His blessings are still wonderful. And having the privilege of knowing and fighting beside Sam has been nothing but a blessing.

"Sam."

Wordlessly, Sam enfolds him into his arms, embracing him tightly. Cas can hear the hitch in Sam's breath, the stuttering beat of his heart.

"When does it end, Cas?" Sam whispers hoarsely, and it is a moment before Cas reaches up to hold Sam back.

He smiles. "When you do."

The laugh that bursts out of Sam sounds suspiciously involuntary, but Cas considers it a small victory. He knows Sam will dissect his deal with Morpheus for years to come, may even try to find a loophole, but there is no need. He has no regrets. He will have time with Dean and Sam both, a lifetime for them, shared, and he really cannot ask for anything else.

"All right, you two, break it up," Gabriel says loudly, amused, and they pull away from each other. "Not that the cuddly puppy routine isn't adorable and total blackmail fodder, but I have it on good authority that Michael's little black dress just woke up."

He looks at Sam and smiles. "I do believe this is when we face the music. Which is an expression I have never understood."

"We'll teach you."

Gabriel walks over, presses his fingers to Sam's forehead, and Sam disappears. He then turns to Cas and smiles, a sad thing, and places a hand on his shoulder. "I just wanted to say… good job, bro. Too bad it had to come to this." He looks somewhere behind Cas and makes a face. "Those shnucks better take care of you."

Cas looks down, smiles, and lifts his head. "Or perhaps I'll do with my time what I will. Perhaps I'll take care of myself."

"I'll make sure they know," Gabriel says, and he does not have to tell Cas who he means by 'they'. Heaven will be in an uproar.

There is a brush of fingers against his brow, and before he is thrust away from the Garnet Diner in Kellogg, Idaho, he hears, "I'll tell 'em everything. Just imagine their _faces_…"

He sips at the coffee Sam purchased from a small concession kiosk in the lobby before departing for the third floor, left behind to nurse his drink in an old, but comfortable chair in a sea of them. He does not like the taste of his coffee, but it is warm and it keeps him awake. For all he slept in Iris's back room, he is surprisingly tired.

The lobby of the Blake building is quiet, as he had been under the impression, from Dean's favorite television show, that the main stays of hospitals are quite busy. And full of doctors telling patients' loved ones of complications or death. Or full of doctors kissing under stairways. There is a woman in a white coat with laugh lines pulling at the corners of her eyes standing toward the entrance to the hallway, speaking with a group of people. Once, Cas would have known this woman's entire life, but now she is just as much of a stranger as anyone else in the world.

Dean had been moved to an observation room upon waking from his deep slumber - coma - and is being kept overnight, like the rest of the others who had fallen into the same category. Bait. Attention-getters. Sam has been up there with him for an hour.

He sighs and finishes off his coffee. It is bitter even with the cream Sam added to it, but it is warm and it feels nice as it sluices down into his stomach. This is the kind of drink he will need to learn to love; it is the Winchester drink of choice in keeping awake. Caffeine. His body will adjust to it, then crave it, and perhaps his hands will tremble without it like Sam and Dean's do.

Across the lobby, an old man is walking with the aid of a younger woman, perhaps his daughter, or his wife - according to the television, this is not uncommon, nor was it a thousand years ago. She cups the man's elbow, her arm wrapped securely around his back, and he leans trustingly into her as they move slowly past the front desk. Cas wonders if he will one day reach that age, or if he will meet his end during a hunt, wonders if Morpheus would arrange for a young death so as to get him sooner.

No. Morpheus agreed to all terms.

Nearly another hour passes before he hears Sam's familiar gait. He looks up from his now-empty coffee cup.

"Hey," Sam says quietly, dropping into the chair across from him. Cas takes note of how red and glassy his eyes are. "Dean wants to see you, but, uh, give him a few minutes, yeah?"

Cas frowns. "Is he - Are you both all right?"

"We're fine, Cas," Sam says, blunt, and sprawls out in his seat with a long sigh. "Just… pissed. He's mad because we went after him, I'm mad he's being a hypocrite, because he totally would've done the same thing if it were me, and we're both mad that you…"

They sit in silence for a long moment, during which Cas watches the young woman lead the old man down the main hallway. His steps are slow, but the grip the man has on her hands is sure.

"When we got separated, where did you go?" Sam tips his head back and closes his eyes, sinking a bit lower in the chair until he looks for all the world as if he has never been so comfortable. "What happened after we went through the door?"

The man and woman disappear from sight. "I went to… a dream of mine. My favorite. I think I was meant to stay there, never knowing it wasn't real, and I truly believe I would have."

Sam drops his head to his chest, curious. "What changed?"

_Castiel._

"I realized it was a dream," he says quietly, closing his eyes at the phantom feel of Dean's lips on his, the smell of the countryside at night warm and earthy in his nostrils. "And you? Where did you go?"

Sam says nothing, but there is something broken and festering there, and Cas wants to burn down all of Demos Oneiroi as retribution for the sheer sorrow on Sam's face. Whatever was dredged up from Sam's mind, or his past, should have been left alone. What could Morpheus have gained from this?

"I was back at Stanford. Back… before Dean came for me. Nothing had changed; my classes were all the same, my friends, the places I went, the books I read. My apartment. God, I had this shitty apartment. It was so small, but we did the best we could, you know? Made it a home. So, I wake up one morning in the bed we got from my friend Derek's aunt, and I roll over, and there she is. Jess." Sam smiles, but it trembles and dips and he lifts a hand to cover it. "And she's… burned. All over. No skin, no clothes. Just… black. Completely charred. Her side of the bed's covered in blood and ashes, but she smiles at me, this skeleton grin, and asks if I want chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Like nothing was wrong. And I… to me, there was nothing wrong either. I mean, I know it's wrong now, but then… it was just normal. And we went through the day, went out with friends for dinner. We had fun. Me, Chris, Nadine, and Jess… and she's still this walking corpse, right? Christ, she lost an arm when we were crossing the street to get to the car. And I just - I just picked it up and handed it to her. She laughed, put it in her purse."

Sam sniffs and blinks rapidly.

"Sam -"

"It was… the best time I've ever had. It was amazing. _She_was amazing."

Cas drags in a breath that feels like broken glass in his throat, then leans forward slightly. "How did you -"

"Know?" Sam finishes the question with a wry smile, huffing wetly with amusement into his hand. "I'd asked Jess to marry me and she said yes. And I was going to call my brother to tell him… when Jess said I didn't have a brother. And I knew."

There are no words to comfort Sam for his losses, for any of it, so he says nothing. It feels heartless to not find some platitude and it makes the silence that follows suffocating, but after a moment Sam jerks his head toward the ceiling.

"You can probably go up now, Cas. He wants to see you."

"How is he… Will he…?" Cas inquires softly, getting to his feet and handing Sam his empty coffee cup.

Sam shrugs and gives him a small smile, clapping him on the shoulder briefly. "Go up and find out. Room 7A. I'm gonna go give Bobby a call and let him know we all… made it out okay. Pay the parking fees for the car. Take your time."

* * *

><p>Cas rides the elevator to the third floor and checks in with the nurse's station. The man behind the desk points him down the hall where he hesitates outside room 7A, a private space that could only be the work of Gabriel. He closes his eyes and breathes out, a voluntary reaction to the stress of the day - the eternities he has walked through - that somehow calms him, and walks inside.<p>

Dean is propped up in a bed very much like the one he had lain in previously, but he is awake, flipping through channels on a mounted television set, a blank expression on his face. Cas takes a few steps toward him, then stops.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean does not look at him, nor does his thumb cease its pressing of the channel button. "So, I hear the Apocalypse's officially been canceled."

It is not what Cas had expected. He cannot read Dean's tone; it is jocular, but it does not match his face.

"Yes."

"And all for the price of you." It is anger, then. Dean's tone is deliberately misleading. Why humans play these games he does not understand. Perhaps before long he too will play them. "Sit down, Cas. It's time we have a chat."

Petulant, irritated words born of exhaustion and stress bloom on his tongue, and Cas nearly unleashes it upon Dean, demands respect for the aforementioned sacrifice, rails against Dean for being the angry one when clearly it is Cas who was wronged.

Instead, he drags a plastic chair with a built-in cushion over to the side of Dean's bed and sits. After a moment, Dean turns the television off and drops the remote next to him on the bed.

"Sam told me everything," Dean says quietly, hands fisting the blankets, which do not look very warm or comfortable. "Or at least everything he knows, since apparently you guys got split up for a while."

"We did."

"You traded your Grace for a way in."

"I did," Cas murmurs, thinking of the way it clinked against the walls of the glass vial, now at the mercy of a vengeful goddess. "I would have traded anything."

Dean inhales sharply, exhales, inhales. "How long were you in there?"

There will never be a way to know. The years blurred together into one stream that neither began nor ended. "I don't - a long time, Dean. I was in there for a very long time."

"You were hurt."

"Yes."

"Were you scared?"

"I'm human now, Dean. So, yes. I was. For you, for Sam, for myself. There were plenty of things to fear in there."

There's a flash of tongue in the dark of the room, illuminated by the soft light from the television, and Dean traces the outline of his lips the way he does when he needs a moment to gather his thoughts. It is one of a million tics Cas has catalogued in the time he has known Dean, one of a million that makes Dean who he is. It warms him to see it; it was hours ago Cas truly thought he would never see it again.

"I never asked you to come after me -"

"You didn't have to," Cas says, annoyed. "There was no question about it. Of course we went after you."

"You could have died. You could've been trapped. Hell, you _are_trapped. Don't sit there and expect me to thank you for -"

Enough of this. "If it had been Sam, what would you have done?"

Dean stops short and blinks. "What?"

"If it had been Sam. If Sam were the one taken into Demos Oneiroi, would you have left him there?"

"Of course not!" Dean barks it out like a law, a foregone conclusion. "How can you even -"

"Then why is this different?" Cas knows that, had he himself been the one, he would still be in the Dream Realm. But Sam is another story. There is no reality in which Dean would leave his brother there. "There was no other option. Sam would never have left you, and neither would I."

Dean laughs, a broken, pitiful thing, and hangs his head. "God, I'm so fucking mad. At you, at Sam, at that smug fuck, Morpheus, at myself… The things I said to you, Cas. About Ellen and Jo… I didn't mean any of it. It wasn't your fault. It was fucked from the start."

Cas says nothing in response. He does not know how to reply.

"But this…" Dean trails off and lifts his head, eyes wide and wet, and something has shattered there. "_Why_. I keep thinking about everything Sam said you went through, everything I've done up to this point, and I just don't get it. I don't understand _why_. I get why Sam came for me. I get it. I know, because I would have done the same, yeah, but you? Why did you? After what I said? After the shit way I've treated you? You'd just give up everything and trade yourself for me? I'm not worth any of that, Cas. You saw what I did in Hell. You've seen what I've done since. What I've done to _you_, trying to keep you on a leash. Christ, I only call you when I need something, and you just - I'm not a good guy. I'm not good enough for this. I know you said you lo - I know you said what you said in there, but I can't wrap my head around it, and I can't live with it. You gotta tell me. I can't do this unless you give me something I can understand."

There are a million answers he could give and a million more right behind them, but in the end he is too exhausted to tell Dean anything but the truth.

"I found I simply could not be awake in a world where you aren't."

Dean stares at him, mouth slack, eyes wet, and Cas remembers a world where that mouth was his to claim, remembers a very long walk where the only goal was to find this man.

_You are worth it._

After a moment, Dean looks away and surreptitiously wipes at his eyes. He shifts to the left side of the bed with a grunt, tearing the intravenous needle from his hand, and pats the free space next to him. He turns red-rimmed eyes onto Cas. "You look like you're about to keel over."

There will be time to say what really lies behind those words, for Dean to truly accept what Cas will give him, what Cas has given for him, but not yet. For now, he slides his coat and suit jacket from his shoulders and drapes them over the back of his chair, then clumsily climbs onto the bed, on top of the blankets. A long moment passes and then Dean curls an arm around him, pressing him close.

It is better than anything he could ever dream.

"So," Dean says, sounding half-way to sleep, fading, brushing his mouth against Cas's hair when he speaks. "You going to give me your side of this thing?"

He yawns and rests his head on Dean's shoulder, feeling sleep calling for him, real sleep, but manages to stave off its advances in favor of the fingers that stroke lightly over his neck.

"I would like to tell you about grease fires, and a house with dusty windows, and a little girl named Olivia… but perhaps I should start with the first one. With the dinosaurs."

Dean starts against him, the fingers pausing before moving up to run through his hair, dragging over his scalp until all Cas's awareness of the world is focused on those five points. "Dinosaurs? No shit. Well? Don't fall asleep on me, Cas. Stay with me."

He will stay. He will stay as long as he is able.

"It began when Sam and I came into Demos Oneiroi, and it was a hall of doors. We didn't know which to choose, which would bring us to you, so we picked at random. Sam opened a door, and we found ourselves on an empty street…"


	10. There is a tree on a sunsoaked hill

There is a tree on a sun-soaked hill, an elm with resigned branches that births globules of light and thought, heavy fruit sprouting wings. They tear from the boughs and fly away, leaving the sad elm, never to return and never missed. More blossom in their place almost immediately.

He studies it - this well-oiled machine - and is so engrossed in the process that he does not hear the heavy footsteps in the grass behind him.

"It was the first of my dreams," Dean says, coming to stand beside Cas. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up at the tree with a critical eye - usually reserved for the Impala or a piece of pie. Except this is not Dean. "I wanted an extension of me, a piece to do my work should I find myself far away. A part of me, a dream that dreams."

"It is magnificent," Cas admits, watching the process with awe. The fruit, the creatures he has come to know and fear and understand, pull away and drift into the sky. The oneiroi will find the minds of the inhabitants of some world out there, whether it is Earth or a place that does not know of angels and humans and a failed deity's kingdom. He tracks them until they leave his sight.

Dean rocks on his heels and then gazes out into the fields, sunlight reflected back in his eyes, his skin, and Cas is not sure how he could have ever thought this poorly-made copy was Dean Winchester. "It will not be long. A blip. A blink. A breath, and then you will finally be here, my Castiel, dreaming of me."

At the bottom of the hill, the tall grasses rustle and part, and Cas cannot contain the smile that blossoms across his face.

"Cas!"

He shakes his head, still smiling. "You're mistaken. It's true that someday I will be here. I will dream for you, perhaps even with you, but… I will never dream of you."

His words are final, and he leaves Morpheus on the hill to wait for the end of this blip, blink, breath.

Running down the gilded slope to join Dean, Cas holds him careful and close, swallowing his laughter and pulling him back into the grass, into gold, until they disappear.

.

.

.

End.

Written for the 2011 Dean/Castiel Big Bang challenge on Livejournal.


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